


certain obscure things

by Steals_Thyme (Liodain)



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bickering, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Repression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Team Dynamics, background Alfred/Diana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8915683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/pseuds/Steals_Thyme
Summary: Bruce seeks to mend in the wake of Superman's death. Fortunately, Superman doesn't believe in staying dead. Unfortunately, Bruce isn't certain how to deal with this—especially with how easily Clark slots into his life. All he knows is that an encounter with the Enchantress is definitely not the way to go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [情不知所起](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942605) by [ginettecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginettecat/pseuds/ginettecat)



> A very, very late fic for the DCEU Exchange that I will faff with forever if I don't actually start posting it. SO HERE GOES. Sorry for how uneven it is & please bear with me, Linn ;)
> 
> (Title from Pablo Neruda's much-abused [Sonnet XVII](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49236). Titles are hard, okay.)

Alfred has waited up for him. Bruce is fiercely grateful despite his inability to muster an acknowledgement. He knows it was probably the longest night of his life and that there'll be words exchanged later; spare, carefully-chosen and denser than lead, but for now, Bruce has nothing to say for himself. 

He keeps himself moving because he can't bring himself to be still. He strips off the cowl and cape and the scrim of dirt as he goes, leaving them in dark puddles on the floor. When the gauntlets come off, a cuprous odor breaks fresh and sharp as the leather bends. It's been a long time since he's let himself feel physically sick from anything but pain, but the literality of the blood on his hands is testing his fortitude. 

(The beast is dead. The air is thick with smoke and there's bitter ash on his tongue, cutting his lungs when he breathes. Rubble shifts under his boot. He bends and goes to his knee. He folds the Superman's arms over his chest, covering the massacre of his heart, and lowers him down into Diana's capable hands.

His face is still in death, the uncertain frown relaxed. When Bruce had met him head-on, he'd only looked angry, that same frown but deepened with purpose, an echo of the disdain in his dream. It made him intimidating, dangerous.

Now all Bruce sees is that he's young.

He had accounted for any number of failure states, but hadn't considered that success might be one of them.)

Alfred remains stoic as he paces. The Bat's reflection paces with him, shadowy in the lakehouse windows. The dirty sky fills his silhouette. There's a shaking in his head, tension like a storm on the horizon. 

Bruce thought he had been sufficiently inured to this. He's wrong, but as far as his latest misjudgments go, it's a small one. And here's another: the windows are tempered but not impenetrable, not ballistics-resistant. The pane shatters easily. His smarting knuckles and the glass on the floor make him feel foolish in a way he can deal with. 

"Bruce," Alfred says.

"I made a mistake." Bruce interrupts him before he can say anything more, be it admonition or misplaced sympathy or worse. 

"I'll have someone come by and fix it tomorrow," Alfred says, even though he knows perfectly well that's not what Bruce means. Bruce is immensely thankful for it. Then, softly, "Enough theatrics. Come here, my boy."

He lets Alfred hold his wrist and examine his hand. His grip is unsteady, and Bruce remembers that he considered tonight a suicide mission. When Alfred wraps one arm around Bruce's neck and pulls him in close, Bruce allows it for his sake, but only for a moment. He presses his eyes shut as Alfred sighs into his hair. 

"Come on," Alfred murmurs, "sit."

He's by the couch. He remembers moving over to it, Alfred's arm sturdy across his back, but the memory is muted already. Punch drunk and crashing, aware of it but unable to do anything about it. He's used to fighting the bounds of his physical limitations like a rottweiler against a chain-link fence, but he never seems to learn that the fence always wins in the end. 

If the good die young, then Bruce is feeling his age.

He sits down too heavily and every joint in his body lets him know about it. His back especially; pain lances up his spine and grips his muscles, and makes him exhale slowly through his teeth. It shocks a bit of lucidity into him. Being thrown against walls isn't uncommon in the course of things. Through them—that's more of a novelty. 

He moves his arm and the meat of his shoulder aches differently, a more explicit pain. Knife wound. It feels incidental. Often he forgets that such a thing would be a traumatic event all on its own for anyone else. He's normalized the harm done to him just as he's normalized his grief; physical hurt to match the rest, abridging his life one scar at a time. 

He should probably feel some way or another about that. He is tired.

A sting across his knuckles brings his attention back, iodine-sharp. Alfred's got the kitchen first-aid kit and a stiff drink, and is tending him. There are spots of blood congealing on the glass tabletop and on the stone floor.

"I did this," Bruce tells him. He knows it's apropos of nothing, can feel himself trying to shut down, telltale cold shock-sweat and everything trembling. Frankly, it's a wonder he's not unconscious. He should be so lucky, but he'll settle for numb. Anything but the glowing afterimage of kryptonite whenever he closes his eyes.

Alfred just purses his lips and extracts a grain of glass from between Bruce's knuckles. 

Bruce knows what Alfred's quiet means, beyond the usual reserve. Can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Not often he holds to that principle, but 'I told you so' would definitely not be nice tonight, even if he's never been more justified in saying it. He can hear how Alfred would put it anyway, knows the cadence of his voice like he knows his own breathing. Might I remind you, sir, that this was the desired outcome.

Bruce thinks: I fucked up. 

He bolts the whiskey and lets it burn its way down. Alfred glances at him, face tight, then pours him another. 

"You can say it." He hears himself as though from a distance. Alfred's tugging at the fastenings of his suit, peeling it away from his wounded shoulder. He's not certain if he's feeling the way he should be. "I earned this. It's what I deserve."

Instead of tutting at his histrionics, Alfred looks stricken. It's an unfamiliar expression. Bruce, skin half-flayed, has not felt this unmoored in a very long time. 

The rain pours white noise into their silence.

"Bruce Wayne." Diana's voice rings out from the threshold of the broken window. Glass crunches beneath her soles.

Bruce turns to look at her, resting his arm along the back of the couch. He's relieved at the interruption even as he's uncomfortable with his boundaries so casually breached. He cloaks it with something that might be a grin, if baring his teeth counts. In his periphery, Alfred removes his glasses.

"I hope it's not intrusive of me to come here," Diana says, her gaze drifting from Bruce to Alfred, then back.

"It is," Bruce says, without any desire to check himself. The whiskey has his tongue already. 

"Ah," Alfred says, maybe taken aback by Bruce's rudeness, even though it's hardly the worst he's ever been. Not even the worst today. Alfred slides his glasses back onto his face and gets to his feet, and for an excruciating moment just stands there with a roll of bandages in one hand and the bottle of scotch in the other, having a crisis of etiquette. 

Bruce sighs. "It's fine," he says. He rests his elbows on his knees, presses his fingers to his eyes, and prays the night will end at some point. "It's fine. Sit down."

Diana unstraps her sword and surrenders it to the hearth along with her shield. _No me saques sin razón; no me envaines sin honor_ , but her lariat, she keeps. She could still be here to post-mortem his actions. When she sits, it's a polite distance from both Bruce and Alfred, her hands resting in her lap. There's earth in the creases of her knuckles and rainwater pearled in her hair, and even in full regalia she doesn't look out of place enough to be real. 

"I'm not here to judge," she says. Bruce wonders what his face must have told her.

Alfred finally remembers his manners and asks if she would like a beverage, or something stronger. 

"Something hot, please?" There's gratitude plain in her voice. She brushes the rain from her arms. 

Alfred glances at Bruce.

"Diana Prince," Bruce says, wearily. He's glad nobody is expecting the genial host. He feels a shrill kind of desperation at the thought of having to don that mask right now. "Alfred Pennyworth."

"Well," Alfred says, "I suppose that will have to do. A pleasure, Miss Prince, even if the circumstances are less than pleasant." He takes her offered hand and actually bows over it a little. "Do excuse me."

"What do you want?" Bruce says, once Alfred has taken his gallant self to the kitchen. He rolls his head back against the couch, rubs at his eyes again. His fingertips come away black with greasepaint. He stares at them uncomprehendingly.

She hesitates. "I came to see that you were okay." 

Not a lie, but not the entire truth. Bruce remains silent; he'll let her draw her own conclusions while he waits for the real reason she's here. The sympathy on her face makes him wary.

"The military were quick to move in," she says, equanimity personified. "You were wise to leave when you did." 

In actuality, it was the rawness of Lois Lane's grief that had driven him away more than the approaching helicopters and armored vehicles, but they also presented their own threat. Whether he's just saved the world or doomed it, the Bat remains _persona non grata_. A forcible debriefing would have been the least of it.

"I did the same," she confides, but then she takes a breath and that dignified bearing of hers slips a fraction. It's enough to put Bruce back on edge. She's weathered centuries, seen enough horror to turn away from the world; nothing good can make her pale like that. Still, she doesn't flinch from the directness of his stare. She raises her chin. "I took Lois to her home, and Superman's—Clark's mother, also. They asked a favor of me. I could not refuse them. Please understand."

"You've brought him here," Bruce says. It's not a question. He has spent a lifetime learning to deduce the truth. Sometimes he knows it with the same intimacy a hanged man knows a rope. 

*

He leads Diana down, away from the touch of the early sun and into the dark beneath the lakehouse. She stops in front of the glass case briefly, looks between it and at the body cradled in her arms, and perhaps finally understands the depth of Bruce's failure. Bruce doesn't know if it's mercy that makes her move on without comment. 

The gurney in the Cave's medical station serves as a makeshift bier. She lays Superman down, except he's in flannel and denim and is nobody but Clark Kent. They left the suit behind, she explains. Something to inter with overwrought public ceremony. It'll raise questions among the top brass—it's been established that Kryptonians don't evaporate on death—but they'll deal with that if and when.

Given all the time in the world, Bruce thinks he couldn't devise a more fitting punishment for himself than this, but when he looks at the body, all he feels is a strange uprush of relief. It's over now, for better or worse. Eighteen months of single-minded fixation and now he's free of it.

He pulls in a deep breath, and another. He had been radicalized in the settling dust of Metropolis. Eighteen months of what he thought were valid, practical concerns and objectively necessary steps, just a smokescreen for his fury and obsession and his fear, rushing to fill the vacuum where his hope used to be. Tightrope-walking along his few remaining lines, his one rule held in abeyance, he'd barely needed priming. 

"Bruce. You don't suffer his loss alone. The whole world grieves for Superman," Diana says, a gentle hand on his arm. "Please know that this is not your doing."

Bruce would like to tell her that she's mistaken, that it's not guilt he's battling, but he could be more honest. He owes himself that much, even as it weighs like a boulder on his heart. 

"I didn't pull the trigger," he says. His gaze slides from Kent's face, down over his shirt front where the fabric craters. "Just bound his wrists and tied the blindfold. Who knows how much I weakened him. If I hadn't—" 

"If you had not laid a finger on him," Diana says firmly, "in the end the outcome would have been the same. It was poison to them both, but—listen to me, when I tell you the truth. Your weaponry and his sacrifice were the only things that allowed us to defeat the creature."

"It shouldn't have come to that." He speaks softly but the Cave catches an echo of his intensity regardless, acidic in the still air. "Luthor was orchestrating something and I let it slide because all I wanted was the kryptonite, and he knew it. I should have aborted that monster before it was even a twinkle in his eye. I got played. I don't like that. I like the cost even less."

"No more than I do."

Diana is wise; she doesn't try to tell him a second time that he holds no blame, just as she doesn't mention her lost footing, the slack in her lariat. She eases him away from the gurney with a hand on his wrist. He relaxes his grip where it's gone white-knuckled on the frame. 

"But it can't be undone, not with regret, nor with anger, nor vengeance. You have stood at this crossroad before. You know the paths that lead from here. What will it be, this time?"

*

Bruce rarely sleeps any more, so much as experiences varying levels of consciousness. At any given point some part of him will always be alert. Alfred calls it being paranoid. Bruce calls it being prepared. What they can agree on, though, is that when he goes out, he goes out hard.

He comes around on his bed, still half-uniformed and aching from crown to heel. The sheets are rumpled under his back, and he figures he must have put himself here since Alfred wouldn't have neglected to take off his boots. Whatever fumes he'd been running on had dissipated once he'd resurfaced from the Cave. The last thing he remembers is a warm mug of tea in his hands, Alfred's unveiled concern, Diana's hand under his arm.

They're both still here. Alfred's voice carries through the open space of the lakehouse; Diana's reply, shortly after. Muted, conversational. Bruce lies in vague restlessness, and then the night before starts replaying itself in a series of horror-movie smash cuts so he fumbles for some painkillers, throws them down and lets himself catastrophize for a minute. Just until the inside of his skull stops burning. 

Time to see what kind of state the rest of the world is in. Hopefully doing better than he is, but he's not going to hold his breath.

Diana's perched on a kitchen stool, pteryges of her skirt draped over the sleek modern metal. Her costume still doesn't look ridiculous, even in the youth of the morning. Bruce isn't certain he can say the same of his own. What he would like to say is that Diana has outstayed her welcome, but judging by the color of the sky, it's barely been an hour since he passed out. 

"He's up already," Diana calls, and Alfred hustles into Bruce's space to deploy a fresh mug of tea and his tablet, and to not-so-surreptitiously gauge his mood.

"Master Bruce," he says, apparently finding him amenable enough. "I'm not accustomed to seeing you in this quality of light." The spark to his tone suggests he's come through the other side of tired. Bruce knows the feeling intimately.

"You're right, this is an ungodly hour." Bruce yawns widely, covers his mouth with the back of his hand and gives every impression of wanting to go back to bed. Part of him is even tempted. "You've been up all night. You should go home."

"I'll drive you," Diana says to Alfred. "You've had a hard time, my friend." She places a hand on his forearm, resting casually above his cuff. 

"As though you haven't," Alfred says. 

Bruce expects him to politely demur, but he accepts her offer without additional fuss. Bruce lets his eyebrows climb. 

"I'll be back in time to deal with the glazier," Alfred tells him, as though Bruce gives a hot damn about the state of his windows right now. He raises his eyebrows right back, shrugs on his coat and brushes imaginary lint from his shoulder, which is a glaring tell if Alfred ever had one. "Call me in the meantime, if—"

"I'll be fine," Bruce interrupts. He lets his expression settle into something more earnest to soften how obviously he's trying to chase them out. "But if there's anything, I will. Thanks, Alfred. Diana. Go home."

*

Bruce doesn't sleep. He does penance by media.

The earliest reports are sparse and vague, a held breath of disbelief as the world waits for the hoax to be revealed. Throughout the day they become more and more bleak as reality sets in. Then there's the predictable outpouring of sentiment; celebrities paying tribute, talking heads delivering anecdotes, hastily-spliced retrospectives. Broadcasts from across the world of people laying down swathes of flowers or holding candlelit vigils or sending balloons into the sky, for all the good it will do. 

The controversy over whether the Superman should exist has seen a sea-change now that he no longer does. 

He expects it to be difficult. It is, needle-toothed guilt biting deep and locking its jaw, but he's borne heavier losses. By the time he pages through the _Daily Planet_ and stumbles over Kent's obituary, he doesn't even flinch. Still, his thoughts twine in a familiar pattern, leaving a negative space in his head that he's learned not to touch. 

In a fit of masochism he relents to the nagging pop-up and subscribes to the paper, then digs into the archives. The idea is to systematically read every column to Kent's name. If there's a reason for it, it's one he's not willing to share with himself.

 _Know thine enemy_ , his brain suggests anyway, approximately two years too late.

Kent's picture inset somehow manages to be bland and forgettable, and it's clear from his writing that he was an inveterate bleeding heart. His human-interest stories are—were—his best work: insightful and easy to connect with, underpinned by a strong sense of justice and a passionate voice. Bruce does his best to find it insufferable. The relentless optimism. The desire to see the best in everyone, the good faith, the idealism; it's as easy to scorn as it is to admire. If things had shaken out differently and they'd worked together long enough to exchange more than a dozen words, he would have collided with Bruce's cynicism at mach speed. 

They would have tried to kill each other within fifteen minutes. Luthor wouldn't have had to lift a finger.

Kent demonstrably loved his job, but it's apparent when he had minimal interest in a subject. He definitely hated covering both sports and the socialite beat. As though under a compulsion, Bruce's fingers tap their way to the puff piece for Luthor's gala. The column is disengaged at best, mostly recycled facts about Luthor's foundation and a glitzy impression of the attendees. One or two paragraphs drive towards a more critical point but head off before they get there, and it's plain what had held Kent's attention that night with how cleanly Bruce Wayne has been excised from the article. 

Must have gotten under his skin.

Bruce throws his tablet aside. He should shower, he thinks, staring out over the lake.

*

He only takes it upon himself to observe the body one more time. It's half intellectual curiosity, half picking at his wounds. 

It's cold in the Cave but it's no morgue. Even so, Kent's body seems held in some kind of stasis. Bruce grasps Kent's wrist and turns his hand palm-up. His joints are slack; no sign of rigor mortis even days after death. His lips and face are pale but not discolored. No corneal clouding when he pulls back an eyelid. The pragmatist in him wants to take samples, pluck his hair and scrape under his fingernails and swab his mouth, catalogue and analyze and commit everything to his database. Work up a game plan and more efficient weaponry in the event of another Kryptonian incursion.

And then, when Kent is gone and buried, all that will remain of him here will be biological schemata. A reductionist model seems a poor way to honor him. An armory, even worse.

Bruce's fingers rest on the inside of Kent's wrist as he thinks.

He only realizes how long he's been down in the Cave when Alfred comes to try and force-feed him something. He sets his tray aside, then lands one hand on Bruce's shoulder and looks somberly down at Kent's body. 

"Oh," he says. "Such a pity." Alfred is the only person Bruce knows who can say that and sound utterly sincere. And also when he says things like: "I hope you're not planning on laminating him, sir."

Bruce opens his mouth, and then closes it. "Hmm," he says, as though it's up for consideration. It's in bad taste and not a little bit disrespectful, and he isn't certain what to do next except laugh; a coarse burst of noise that echoes too loudly in the Cave. It feels as awful as it sounds, but it's a relief, too. Like draining a wound. 

Alfred looks at him with deep concern, as though he weren't the one to start it.

*

Bruce pulls a few strings, greases a few palms. Twists a few arms. The post-disaster chaos means it takes longer than it should, but also makes it easier to get Clark Kent home without attracting undue attention.

It's in this interstitial that things slot into place, in the span of time between the body being gone and Bruce seeing him in the ground. He delves into Luthor's data files, at first to create a null space in his thoughts, to dampen the part of his brain that hears the call of the void when he's catfooting along Gotham's vertiginous ledges.

And then, after paying Luthor a visit and seeing him swing between herald and lunatic, abstract portents and abject terror, he keeps digging because he's concerned. He is not a superstitious man, but he is a practical one. If a reckoning is coming, he won't be caught unawares. Not a second time.

*

It's a suitably overcast day, smell of mulching leaves and turned earth strong in the air. Bruce stands beneath the naked branches of an oak tree. His skin itches where his wounds have reknit and there's an old pain pressing up against his ribs, but still he feels energized with a resolve he thought he'd lost. Somewhat inappropriate for a funeral, but then, he isn't formally attending. He'd decided he was done with funerals a long time ago.

He senses Diana approaching in his periphery, treading light over the autumnal debris in the grass. She will be the first he'll convince, and the easiest. He doubts she considers herself indebted to him for uncovering her photograph, but his leverage lies in something less tangible. How long since she has fought alongside comrades-in-arms? 

She comes to stand by his shoulder and waits. She will be the easiest to convince, yes, but that doesn't mean it'll be easy. He takes a moment, and then irrevocably sets things in motion. 

"Help me find them," he says.

*

He tries to call Lois Lane a respectful number of months after the funeral. He doesn't plan what he's going to say, for once. He only knows that he should say something. But her phone rings off and she never returns the call. He doesn't try to contact her again.

Martha Kent, though, either doesn't have caller ID or is more willing to pick up for a Gotham area code. She's friendly enough when she answers, but is immediately more subdued when he introduces himself. Not cold, per se, but guarded.

"Yes," she says, "I know who you are." She's matter of fact about it. Bruce imagines that Lois told her everything. But then she speaks again, and he hears that the precision of her speech is only grief. "And before you say anything, I'd like to thank you for what you did for my son. For bringing him back to me. Without you, he would have—it would have been devastating. To not have him here."

Bruce's throat knots tight. He didn't call expecting any kind of gratitude. He thought he wanted to apologize, but maybe what he really wanted was forgiveness. He feels ungracious about it.

He can hear someone moving around in the room, fuzzy background noise over the already bad line. Mrs. Kent's voice fades in when she speaks again as though she'd turned away from the receiver for a moment. "Was there something you wanted? Mr. Wayne?" 

It's not that Bruce is a coward, it's that he has more manners than to upset a woman in her own home when she has company. "I'm sorry," he says. "It's nothing. I'm sorry for bothering you, Mrs. Kent."

*

Diana eventually agrees to help, apparently more out of amusement at his persistence than anything else. Bruce finds that he's surrendered his home and the Cave in the process of convincing her, but he's not as fiercely territorial about it as he would have been only months ago. He chooses to file that fact under 'personal growth'. Regardless, he suspects she would still have come and gone as she pleased, as implacable as the phasing moon.

She's been keeping tabs on Metropolis and sharing the movements of its more dangerous characters. Bruce often discovers her taking tea with Alfred of an afternoon, her coat on the back of a chair, purse at her elbow, politely waiting for him to rise. Today, though, he was up and out before either of them. End of the fiscal quarter, lots of meetings to pretend to feign interest in. 

He passes through the lakehouse at lunchtime to drop off a set of documents and pick up another, and to maybe loosen his tie a notch.

Diana is there, seated at the table with Alfred, as usual. He sees them as he approaches the door; the graceful curve of her throat as she tips her head back, laughing. Alfred's smile mirrors her delight in a way Bruce doesn't often see, most likely because there's rarely any delight to mirror. They both turn to look at him as he enters. For a moment he feels as though he's interloping in his own home, but then Diana waves a quiet hello, and Alfred rises to his feet. 

"A little old to be mooning over a pretty face, don't you think," Bruce says as Alfred attends him. He leafs through the paperwork and stuffs it into his attaché. "Last month's minutes?"

"Oh, please," Alfred replies, handing him the stray manila file. "You and I both know there is more to Miss Prince than that."

Bruce glances across the room at Diana, who turns her face to her cup of tea and pretends she isn't eavesdropping. Her smile gives her away. "I don't hear a denial." 

"I would rather you didn't speculate, Master Wayne."

Bruce shrugs and brusquely snaps his case closed. It's none of his business, so he keeps his mouth shut. If, for any reason, Diana might confide in Alfred when she wouldn't in the Bat, then he'll play it safe and stay in Alfred's good books. He can lean on Alfred's loyalty in order to keep himself in the loop. 

"Metropolis today, is it?" Alfred asks, in a particular tone that never fails to get Bruce's back up. 

Yes, this afternoon's meeting involves a WE subsidiary set up for relief work after Black Zero in Metropolis, and now for the disaster that's yet to have a similarly fanciful name hung on it. Yes, the headquarters are on Sullivan Street, a few blocks west of Heroes Park.

No, Bruce hasn't been over the bay in months. No, there's not a specific reason for that. There has been little to take him there until now.

**


	2. Chapter 2

The Port of Gotham has earned its restoration, though rather than being subsumed by the creeping gentrification of Tricorner Yards, it's being returned to functionality: hundreds of tons of rubble cleared; rotting piers replaced; new haulage yard; the rail link recommissioned. The old terminal buildings were scoured clean as part of the investigation into Knyazev and his connection to Luthor. There are still scraps of greasy yellow police tape clinging to the bricks.

Bruce has spent some time earmarking new routes and trade links for WE Shipping, in particular some fishing villages in Newfoundland. Projections suggests that it's less than ideal from a business perspective, but money is only one way to measure value. Sustainable fishing and fair trade are others—and Gotham takes pride in her reputation as a seafood destination, after all. 

He will have to visit personally. He's looking for a very particular fish.

He picks up a newspaper on the ferry over to Metropolis, abandoned on one of the slatted wooden seats. The media continues apace with its coverage even six months after Superman's death. Strange how swiftly that name has undergone a lexical shift. It used to stir a deep helplessness in him, or visceral rage, but now his interpretation is of hope, determination. Only sometimes regret. 

The less tasteful tabloids have all but deified him, and according to this particular rag there's a petition to literally canonize him that's gathered millions upon millions of signatures—and now a second petition to get the papacy to stop politely ignoring it. He dumps the paper in a recycle station on his way off the ferry landing.

*

Bruce endures the meeting. Genuinely, this time, instead of fiddling with his cufflinks and pretending that he doesn't follow half of what's being said, though this set are particularly fond of their nonsense jargon. Something about Metropolis' streets has thrown him off, and he finds himself longing for the familiar meatgrinder of Gotham's rush hour.

It may have been the shopfronts with all the merchandise: Superman's crest everywhere, appropriated in order to exalt him. Slogans like _remember_ ; _hero_ ; _sacrifice_. 

On his way back, Bruce detours to the park in the hope it will settle his agitation. It helps that it's a sunny day, an afternoon April shower steaming off the sidewalk. In Gotham the rain is reliably funereal, but in Metropolis it makes everything shine. The chalk around the granite memorial is bright and crisp, recently refreshed. The candles and old flowers must be cleared up frequently, but there is still an accumulation of withered petals and soggy confetti under the new bouquets. People mostly leave roses and lilies, daffodils now they're in season, though there are a few unusual offerings, like lotus flowers. 

It's quiet despite the number of people milling around, just the muted traffic from the street and occasional clatter of the monorail. An air of reverence pervades. Bruce finds it mildly irritating, but he stands for a while anyway, chin tucked into his scarf. Before long, he senses someone approach nearby. Another pilgrim come to pay his respects, an impression of denim and a gray sweatshirt in his periphery. Through long habit, Bruce shifts so the man can't disappear into his blind spot. His hood is pulled up, only the tip of his nose and a tousled lock of hair visible.

"I like this better than the statue," the man says, in a voice Bruce has heard in his nightmares. Except here it's warm, amused around the edges. 

You would, Bruce thinks, even as his heart arrests. After so many months, the shadow of Clark's death cast long over everything he's done, this is how his grief decides to manifest itself. 

He must be under more stress than he realized. He sighs through his nose. "Great," he says. 

He knows how cruel his mind can be about this kind of thing. After Jason—back then, there were so many times he'd walked into the Cave, completely expecting to find him there. Or moved against a crowd on the heels of a familiar figure, a snatch of a voice, his heart lifting unbearably only to have a puzzled stranger turn under his hand. 

He has a lot more hope than he used to, but it cuts both ways. He'd forgotten how much that can hurt. 

*

There's a hard wind blowing in off the ocean, thick with brine. Facing into it strikes Bruce in the lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. Which is mostly academic, because he's having trouble with that anyway. He is under a _lot_ more stress than he realized. 

He grips the ferry railing tight, paint-flakes sharp under his palms, and centers himself with brute force.

"I didn't mean to startle you," the man in gray says. Bruce remains silent, willing himself to be alone. The man only persists in talking. "You look—you're looking well, Bruce."

Bruce can't bring himself to acknowledge him. If he turns, there are three possibilities: he will find a stranger; he will find nobody; he will find a revenant. None of these options imbue him with confidence. Instead, he wonders if it's plausible that Crane has refined his fear toxin, concocted it with a subtlety that blends the edges of the world away instead of immediately dropping him into an nightmarescape. A slow drag into madness instead of trying to make his heart stop outright. 

Or maybe he's already as good as dead, bleeding out into the gutter of some Gotham alley or other and this is the last gasp of his dying mind, damaged neurons misfiring, one last wound to go out on. 

The sea churns muted caustics against the hull. The railing here is rough and pitted, eaten by salt-rust. He might imagine the ear-splitting seagulls, but not the forlorn drone of a foghorn or the irregular clunk of the ferry's machinery, nor the snatches of conversation rising from belowdecks. Too many complex, granular details to sustain for long. 

"This isn't acceptable," Bruce says. 

There's a long pause. "Okay. Not here, then."

He feels the presence leave like a cloud moving across the sun. He shivers.

*

Bruce disembarks and finds Alfred waiting with the car. He glances back over his shoulder as he gets into the vehicle, but there's nothing haunting the ferry's deck.

"Are you well, sir?" Alfred asks. "You're as white as a sheet."

*

Alfred drops him off, intuiting through long familiarity that he should leave him alone for the rest of the afternoon. They've recently had their long-standing bi-yearly maybe-you-should-see-a-specialist argument, so Bruce doesn't ask him to stay even though there's an apparition waiting just inside the treeline. He'd rather be alone while he figures out how to make it go away. 

He starts with the most straightforward approach. "Go away," he says, fumbling with his keys. "You can't be here." Honestly, he'd expected this kind of bullshit _before_ he stopped washing the painkillers down with a glass of red.

"Listen to me," the man says. 

The rain intensifies, falling heavy and loud onto the trees and in fat drops that slide down the back of Bruce's neck. A chill ripples up his spine. "I'd rather not," he says. "I'm really not in the mood."

"I'm sorry," the man says. "I know it wasn't the right time. I just didn't expect to see you there, I didn't think it through."

"You didn't expect to see me there," Bruce repeats. He gets a grip on his keys, cold between his numb fingers. The sensation is barely grounding. A laugh presses at the back of his throat. " _You_ didn't expect to see _me_ there."

He rattles the door open and goes straight through to the kitchen to draw himself a glass of water. He feels how badly his hands want to shake. Too much caffeine, not enough food or sleep. His blood sugar is probably flatlining. Careless, but he didn't anticipate anything more strenuous than deciphering middle-management buzzwords today. He downs the water and stares at the floor while he waits for reality to reassert itself. 

He hears the door close; the sound of the rain becomes muted. Some soft footsteps, and then a pair of sneakers come into his eyeline. "I know it's a shock," says a voice at his shoulder. 

Bruce grudgingly considers the possibility that he's experiencing a psychotic break. 

"It's okay. You're not going crazy."

That isn't mollifying to hear, since it's likely what he'd tell himself if he was, in fact, going crazy. He presses his fingertips against his eyelids until a starfield bursts into existence. "You died," he says, firmly. 

"Only a little bit." The man sounds like he's smiling. He's making a joke. Bruce is fairly sure his subconscious is trying to sabotage him at the best of times, but it's usually a shade more subtle than this.

"You're dead," Bruce says again. "I saw you buried."

"It was very generous of you to pay for the funeral. I heard it was a nice ceremony."

This is, technically, a conversation, even if it's with his own intrusive thoughts. No more excuses. Bruce looks up.

Clark Kent—this man who looks like Clark Kent, this substantial, respiring man who, terribly, sublimely, looks like Clark Kent—is pulling his hood back and shaking rain out of his unruly excuse for a haircut. He has a month of beard and is noticeably thinner, but the sculpted planes of his face are unmistakable.

Bruce struggles as Clark smiles tentatively at him. Something that he knows to be true in the most fundamental way suddenly isn't, and he can't be certain what his own face is doing.

"I'm starting to think I didn't get my money's worth," he says, a great deal more steadily than he feels. 

The corner of Clark's mouth turns up with more confidence. "You know, I think we got off on the wrong foot," he says, with spectacular understatement. "Um, a couple of times." He offers his hand. 

Bruce takes it automatically, as though he's meeting a business associate over lunch. He's incredibly warm. He has a brief flash of memory: their meeting at Lex's gala. Had he felt so warm then? His demeanor certainly hadn't been. Nor when they'd fought, only barely thawing just before he'd died. And he had died, before Bruce's eyes. And now he is here, before Bruce's eyes. Bruce feels stupefied, wheels spinning as he tries to reconcile this conflicting information, these mutually exclusive truths that throw doubt on his perception of the world. 

His eyes drop to Clark's chest. Clark notices and shifts his grip on Bruce's hand, pulling him in to rest his palm against his sweatshirt. He's no longer cored through. He's warm, or Bruce's hands are cold; the heat of him bleeds through the cotton of his top. He holds Bruce there through the span of a heartbeat. 

Bruce remembers his dream, the Superman's fingers sinking into his chest, clutching for his heart. His adrenaline ratchets up a notch and it's only his immense self-control that stops him jerking his hand away like he wants to. 

"Explain," he manages to say. 

Clark shrugs, muscle shifting under Bruce's hand, and lets him go. "Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably." There's a startling list of things Bruce has been unprepared for today. Clark himself, and now a subset of Clark-related things. His sheepish expression and self-deprecating smile are up there. "But, whatever the reason, here I am."

"Yes," Bruce says. "Here you are."

Clark goes quiet. They both know what must come next, but it seems that neither of them are inclined to broach the subject. So, Bruce could say, if he were anyone else. How about this weather, huh. Did you catch the game last night? 

"How long have you been back?" he says instead, as though Clark has been on vacation.

"A while." Clark seems relieved to be talking, even if it's about this. "I scared the daylights out of Ma, turning up on her porch covered in dirt. She tried to call you. I had to wrestle the phone out of her hands." He obviously sees the humor in that, black as it is; he has an expressive face when he's not frowning. Bruce wants to make himself impassive in response. "That probably didn't help matters."

"No," Bruce says. "No, it probably didn't. Why would she call me?"

"She thought you would know what to do."

Traditional ways to dispatch the undead include: silver bullet; beheading; stake through the heart. Bruce keeps his expression flat. "Why didn't you let her?"

Apart from the obvious, of course.

Clark runs both hands through his hair. It falls back into his face in loose curls, over the furrow in his brow. "I needed some time. I didn't know what the hell I could say to you. I... still don't have much of an idea, if I'm honest. I didn't plan for it to happen like this." 

A plan, any plan, seems like a luxury at the moment. Over the past few months, Bruce has thought of a few things that he'd liked to have said to Clark—but not so much, now that he actually has the chance. He will have to decide how much of his guilt is still worthwhile. "In that case," he says. "Why did you come here? I'm sure it wasn't to check on my well-being."

Clark shrugs, his shoulders coming to rest in a slump. "I don't know. Maybe? When I saw you at the monument, you looked… and I thought…" He stares at Bruce for a few seconds, then abruptly at his feet, then at his own reflection in the glass walls, anywhere but at his face again. "Forget it. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm—I guess was feeling lost."

And has inexplicably decided to use Bruce as a homing beacon. He considers that their fight might have broken Clark in a way neither of them expected, for him to seek Bruce out like this. Maybe he's suffered some kind of traumatic bonding. There's a chance that Bruce is compelling to Clark the same way a keen blade or the third rail is to a mortal person. 

Clark releases a protracted, listless sigh. Bruce has inferred from his satellite-wrecking habits that he doesn't need to breathe like a normal person, but it doesn't seem like an affectation. It just seems like he's tired. Bruce knows tired. His brain is still essentially mid-pratfall; he's put a hand on Clark's shoulder before he's really thought about it. Just a quick pat and then away, perfunctory reassurance. It was the right thing to do, if the look Clark gives him is any indication. And the wrong thing, the way that gets its hooks into him.

Bruce has a bad track record with broken birds. Suddenly he can't stand to be still any longer. He pulls off his overcoat and heaps it on the counter, and makes himself busy. "You need to get back out there," he tells Clark, as though it isn't the most obvious thing—as if it isn't what he himself wants to do right now, to subdue this volatility in him. "I don't know if you noticed, but the world's more or less decided that they need a Superman after all."

"Maybe." Clark sounds doubtful. "They're a lot nicer about me now that I'm dead."

"Public opinion is fickle like that." Bruce opens two cupboards and a drawer before he finds the coffee filters, even though he knows where they're kept. "What's stopping you?"

There's a long pause. The more the seconds pile up, the more Bruce is certain that if he turns around, he'll find himself alone, talking to nothing but his guilt. But then Clark shifts on his feet, sneakers squeaking on the slate floor.

"I thought I'd wait until after Easter, maybe. Quite a long time after Easter."

Bruce imagines the average headline, never mind the paroxysms the lunatic fringe would go into. Cults have been founded on more tenuous evidence. "Hardly matters," he says. "People will draw the comparison, regardless. And some of them will hate you for that alone." 

He's not sure if that's supposed to be a reassurance.

Clark obviously isn't sure, either. His mouth presses into a reproving half-smile. "Not everyone shares your iconoclastic tendencies, Bruce."

Bruce snorts. "No need to blow smoke up my ass," he says. "Are you staying?"

"Staying?" 

Bruce holds up a mug.

"Oh," Clark says, rests back on the counter. "I guess. Thanks."

Quiet again, except for rain cracking against glass, the intermittent gurgle of the coffeemaker. Clark shifts on his feet, restless in the silence. He keeps looking at Bruce and then looking away. It's perhaps unkind, but Bruce stokes the tension with some open observation, watching his kinesic behaviors, his fleeting expressions. Any ideas Bruce may have formed about intercultural discrepancies seem absurd: Clark displays a full complement of very human, very mundane, and somewhat anxious tics. The ordinariness of it goes some way to overriding the impossibility of him standing here.

Normalization, Bruce thinks, is a dangerous thing.

Clark unfolds and then re-folds his arms for about the fifth time, then breaks the silence. "There is something." 

Bruce looks at him. There are any number of things Clark could lash him with, and even this small pause makes him draw up in anticipation. 

But—

"Thank you," is all Clark says, with a sincerity that is far more upsetting than it should be. "For saving my mom. That's something I need to say, more than anything else. Thank you, Bruce."

Bruce exhales, closes his eyes briefly. He's tired of people being grateful to him when they really, really shouldn't be. "I don't need thanks for keeping a promise. Especially not from you," he says. "Not when—"

"Yeah," Clark says over him. Bruce doesn't like being interrupted, but in this instance he's good to let it slide. "Yeah, actually… never mind about the coffee. I've messed up your day enough. I should go." 

He makes to do just that.

"Clark." 

Clark has used Bruce's name freely, but once it's out of his mouth, Bruce realizes this is the first time he's said Clark's name out loud. It hangs awkwardly in the air. 

He can't pinpoint when he stopped being Kent, now that he thinks about it. 

Clark turns, hand on the door. He waits patiently while Bruce clears his throat.

"I'm glad you're alive," Bruce says. He's not entirely sure that's the whole truth, or if it's all of what he means, but it's the best he can manage without getting too near to the bone.

Clark's smile is thin. "Well, that's one thing we have in common."

*

Clark vanishes above the clouds with a crack; Bruce watches him go, gravity and physics just as incidental, apparently, as death.

He waits a full ten minutes to be sure he's gone. Then he goes down into the Cave and draws a blood sample. While he runs a full workup, he pulls all the surveillance around the lakehouse from the past hour. Nothing suspicious in his system, but nothing suspicious on his perimeter feeds either. Either Clark was discreet, or—

He doesn't trust his voice so he fires off a text to Alfred: `have a situation, meet ASAP`. He gets a response in less than a minute. He goes upstairs to wait, stands in the kitchen with the two empty mugs on the counter and can clearly picture Clark as he stands there, the pitch of his voice, the solidity of his presence. 

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. He didn't imagine this. He wants to inflect the thought upward as though it's a question.

Alfred comes in the door, Diana behind him, urgency in the way she unshoulders her bag. 

"He's alive," Bruce says without preamble. 

"Goodness," Alfred says, hands pausing a moment before continuing to pull off his scarf. "That is a turn-up for the books."

Diana's face relaxes in a moment of profound relief, and then she smiles at him. She says nothing at first but there's no hint of disbelief, only joy. Slowly, she takes Bruce's hands and clasps them between hers. 

"Then you get another chance," she says. She has a touch of divinity about her, the evening sun burnishing her hair, and somehow that drives the truth home. If Diana is eternal, then why not Clark?

"Another chance," he echoes back to her. His voice cracks in his throat. He can't remember feeling so grateful in his life, or more uncertain. "I don't know what I—"

"A suggestion," Alfred says, "But perhaps you should try talking to him this time?"

*

"I can't tell you how uncomfortable I am." 

"You look it." Bruce tips his head down, fixes Clark with a look over the top of his sunglasses. "And the more you look it, the more people will watch you. Just relax, Clark. Nobody gives a damn about two guys grabbing a coffee together."

Clark hunches over, his forearms in parallel to the counter. He angles the peak of his baseball cap ever lower. "I'm not as provincial as you think," he says from somewhere beneath the _Metropolis Monarchs_ logo. "Is there any reason we had to do this here?"

"It's the cafe closest to Hob's Bay," Bruce says.

"I meant in Metropolis. I don't like to spend too long out—" Clark's voice drops, then tapers off as the server makes her way to their end of the bar, jug of coffee in hand.

"We already had round one at my place," Bruce says to him, though he's grinning up at the waitress, one eyebrow arched as he leans in toward her. She smiles back indulgently. "Which pancakes are your best pancakes? Butterscotch? I'll have those."

"Just coffee for me," Clark says, studiously examining the Formica countertop while she pours. "—I don't like to spend too long out in public, at present," he finishes, once they're alone again. "Is everything about fighting or sex with you?"

"Sure, why not," Bruce says. "Clark, you hid in plain sight for two whole years with something that can barely be called a disguise. Nobody recognizes me in North Face and wearing sunglasses indoors, and I'm not even dead. Nobody will recognize you with a beard and that hat." He flicks at the peak. "Why the agitation."

"It's not about being recognized as—" he lowers his voice, leans toward Bruce earnestly, "—as Superman. There's always gonna be people who think that Elvis ain't dead. I'm more concerned about being recognized as Clark Kent." He glances side-on, catches Bruce with the startling blue of his eyes. "All it would take is enough suspicion from the wrong people, enough dots joined—have you _seen_ the internet, by the way? Just one crackpot theory that shakes out for a change, and Ma would be… I won't put her through that again. Or Lois."

Clark ducks his head, rubs at the back of his neck as their order arrives.

"People overlook the unexpected, Clark," Bruce says, though he's hardly in a position to call anyone over-cautious. He pushes the stack of pancakes to the middle; he isn't that hungry, and Clark looks like he needs something to do with his hands. "They regularly miss what's right in front of their faces. But it would be simple enough to construct you a new identity, if it'll make you feel better."

Clark sets about adulterating a perfectly serviceable cup of coffee. It might fall considerably short of Alfred's standards, but it hasn't done anything to deserve that much creamer. He goes on to dump in a packet of sugar, presumably to make sure it's dead. "Not really," he says, with diffident shrug. "I have one." 

"Is that so," Bruce says. It's a mild surprise; he hides it behind languorous indifference.

"It's flimsy." Clark lifts up off his stool to fetch his wallet out of his back pocket, and all the hideous flannel in the world can't hide the solid arch of his back. Bruce frowns at the counter until Clark slides a driver's license in front of his face. "Not on any databases. Useful in a pinch but it's no use, long-term."

Bruce picks it up for closer inspection, tilts his shades down his nose as he turns it into the light from the cafe's windows. It's a forgery, but it's a good one. Laser-engraved rigid polycarbonate, extremely convincing hologram work. Lasers. Of course. The name on the license is for one Kal Ellis. Something about that tugs at Bruce's memory. 

"Interesting name, Kal," he says.

Clark's attention narrows on him so intensely that it makes Bruce's teeth itch. His pupils have contracted, hair pricked up on his forearms. The name holds power over him, and inadvertently or not, he's handed it over to Bruce without a second thought.

Bruce tucks that knowledge away for the time being. "This is pretty convincing for amateur work," he says.

Clark blinks rapidly, frowning to himself as he idly picks up a fork. "I traveled a lot when I was younger," he says and starts working his way through the pancakes, apparently without realizing he's doing it. It's easy to be a nervous eater with a metabolism like his, Bruce supposes. "I needed to cover my tracks in case I slipped up. So I learned."

For all the discomfort Clark's demonstrated so far, the confession of past wrongdoing seems to bother him the most. "Not so squeaky clean after all," Bruce says. The needle of his assumptions, calibrated to swing wildly between World Destroyer and Boy Scout, adjusts a notch. He lets a hint of approval bleed through, just to see how that tweaks him. 

Quite a lot, as it happens. Clark blinks and raises his hand to his face as though to adjust a pair of glasses, his color rising from under neckline of his shirt. It's not quite indignation, and also not quite what Bruce was expecting. 

(He could examine his own reasoning for this, but he doubts he will be overly enthused at what he sees.)

Clark gets himself together enough to take another bite of pancake. He gestures with his fork and speaks with his mouth full. "You know, Lois thinks I should stay away from you. She thinks you're bad news."

"She has a good nose for trouble."

"Mm. She's going to be madder than a wasp under a flowerpot."

"Going to be?" Bruce says. Interesting. "You haven't told her we're meeting?" 

Clark gets halfway through a word and then obviously reconsiders what he was going to say. "I just want to be clear where I stand with you," he says instead, "before I start telling her you're not as bad as she thinks you are."

"Is this a temporary truce. Is that what you're asking?"

"Well, I was more wondering if we could work together, but that offers some interesting insight, thanks."

"Work together." At least Bruce will come away from this with one less concern: the Superman would deign to associate with the Bat. Though Bruce is certain that their one incident of teamwork can't be enough to outweigh his unsavory reputation. "Now why," he says, affecting something slightly too impertinent to be polite, "would a paragon like you be interested in working with a—what was it? A civil-liberty-trampling vigilante."

But instead that crushed-ice glare he'd thrown at the gala, Clark flashes a smile, corners of his mouth quirking as if Bruce has made a private joke between them and he appreciates it. Not only that, but he actually finds it funny. Bruce sighs inwardly, further recalibrates his assessment.

"I'm not, specifically, so much as I'm interested in keeping out of your crosshairs," Clark says.

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. Bruce rubs at his cheek, rasp of bristle under his thumb. "Look," he says. He can feel the justifications bubbling up, the need to lay out his motives for Clark to see. All the reasons that his death was an ethical imperative. He tamps the impulse down. "I made a mistake. And that's not something I admit to lightly."

"Well, that's a start," Clark says, still mild. "Do your mistakes often end up with you trying to murder a guy?"

"Not as a rule. You were a special case."

"Story of my life." Clark sounds fed up about it, for all his amiability.

"I'm not gunning for you any more," Bruce says. And then, despite it being a pretty tall, pretty goddamn fucked-up order, he says, "Trust me."

Clark looks at him. "I'm not sure I can do that," he says, slowly. "But I do believe you. You're a formidable man—" 

Bruce can't help but notice the way his voice shakes a little on that, can't help the pinprick of shame, nor the satisfaction.

"—and I'd like to keep on your good side. Can we start over?"

Bruce shakes his head. Clark asking _him_ if they can start over. Each new facet of him can hold Bruce's assumptions in tension for only so long. His construct of the Superman continues its slow collapse, its constituent parts warping and rearranging into an actual person, one that Bruce had not anticipated at all.

"Finish your pancakes and let's get out of here," he says.

"Oh," Clark says. "Those were your pancakes." He looks bewildered. This is a man who can level a city block with a sneeze, and he's bewildered. 

It's not charming, Bruce thinks. It's dangerous. He keeps his face still and his heart more so. He finishes his coffee in a long swallow and tucks a generous tip under the napkin holder. "Forget about it."

**


	3. Chapter 3

There's an art to asking questions, a certain rhythm to the give-and-take that Clark has a natural instinct for. Bruce's way of derailing him is to keep things succinct. He's used to nosy journalists, but usually he's fielding questions about significantly different nocturnal activities. This is much more personal.

"And you can edit the DMV database?" Clark asks. Sleeves rolled up, he leans with elbows on the terminal railings, one foot propped on the bottom rung. All he needs is a rippling field of corn as a backdrop instead of the expanse of the bay. Every bit the farmhand, except for all the interrogating. 

"Yes," Bruce says, and checks his watch again. Still four minutes until the ferry is due to arrive, which, at this point, is four minutes longer than Bruce wants to spend deflecting this man.

"I'm guessing someone there owes you some favors, or you bribed an employee for their credentials." His smile borders on mischievous, which is somehow even worse than his pleasant bewilderedness. "Or do you work there weekends?" 

It's done with a neat bit of tunneling malware injected into their intranet, but Bruce will keep that to himself. Clark's been tapping the edge of his license on his palm and flicking it between finger and thumb in an irritating slap-slap-slap that Bruce has an increasingly low tolerance for. He slightly regrets not leaving him back at the diner. Should have just gotten his number, texted him some instructions. He should get his number anyway, for practical reasons.

"Nope," he says, short. He gestures for the license, palm up. "All you need to know is that I can make that legit."

Clark hesitates a moment, possibly considering if he wants to be party to a criminal act and realizing it's too late anyway because it's a felony to forge state documents, then hands it over. Bruce disappears it into a pocket of his hideous rainwear.

The ferry approaches across the water. "Come by in a few days," Bruce says. "We'll talk about an SSN, a birth certificate. Set up some paper trails and a credit history, then work out the finer details."

"Thanks," Clark says, word half-lost in the loud rumble of the ferry's engine, the grind and clank of the gangway as it's lowered. He looks unsettled. Maybe he's considering what kind of a reach Bruce has, how many supposedly secure places he has a backdoor into. "I appreciate it, Bruce."

The worst thing is, despite everything, he does. 

"Kal," Bruce says smoothly, as they shake goodbye. Clark's grip tightens and Bruce feels the ache of it in his knuckles for the rest of the day.

*

"Master Bruce," Alfred says, buzzing over the Cave's intercom. "You have a guest."

Bruce pulls himself from under the car and wipes his hands down the front of his undershirt. "Send him down." 

"...very well." A there's a hint of surprise in Alfred's voice that Bruce can forgive him for, and of disapproval, which he is less inclined to. Of all of Alfred's talents, his one for polite chastisement is Bruce's least favorite.

"He can see through walls, Alfred. Let's not be coy about this."

"He has great hearing, too," Clark says, a little distance from the speaker. "He's also polite and doesn't snoop through people's homes. Where's down…?" And then the intercom snaps off. Bruce takes the intervening minutes before he arrives to turn the car's engine over and take a look at the diagnostics. Still not as tight as he'd like. He frowns and lies back on the creeper, pulls himself back under the chassis. Clark can deal with talking to his feet while he tinkers.

"You have too much oil in the intake manifold." 

Or not. Bruce wheels himself back out again and fixes him with a glower. He's in his ubiquitous ugly plaid, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans and looking around the Cave with subdued curiosity. 

"Probably worn piston rings. Are you getting high crankcase pressure?"

"I didn't know you were a mechanic."

"You don't grow up on a farm without fixing a tractor or two."

"Does this look like a tractor?"

Clark just lifts his shoulders in a long shrug, hands in his pockets still. All aw-shucks-mister, as if everything doesn't look like a life-sized blueprint to him. Bruce feels Clark's eyes on him, and he's immediately and acutely conscious of the minutiae of his body—the mends in his bones, the tears in his ligaments, and absurdly, the color of his underwear, but Clark just glances at the neckline of his undershirt and the handprint-shaped smear of oil over his chest, and then back up to his face. 

Bruce has a button-down slung over the back of his computer chair—experience dictates that only Alfred can get away with coveralls over his three-piece without getting grime on the cuffs—but it doesn't seem worth putting it back on. He sits and wakes up a monitor instead, pulls a few windows into focus. "You're all set," he says, and sits back when Clark leans obliviously into his space to take a look.

"Wow," Clark says. He sounds genuinely impressed. "You really are a criminal."

"Just try to take me in, son," Bruce says.

Clark smiles at him, really smiles, as bright as daybreak, as though Bruce has said something to delight him. If Clark had looked at him like this at the foundation gala, Bruce might have even— 

Bruce might have. And he knows in his heart that it wouldn't have changed a thing. Small favors, sometimes.

"I'd be implicated," Clark says. "We're partners in crime, now." 

Bruce grimaces, offended at himself over how that's the reality of it, and how strongly it appeals. Clark throws him another hugely disarming grin, which doesn't help. Then he turns his attention back at the screens again, eyes scanning the catalogue of his new identity. The smile slowly drops from his face as he reads.

"I guess that's that, then," he says, with a forced levity that makes him sound more bereft than if he hadn't bothered trying at all. "Goodbye, Clark."

Maybe it's this that drives it home, finally, that Clark Kent was never just a disguise for the Superman, not a convenient cover like Bruce Wayne, profligate son. His humanity is not a masquerade. It's his history and his identity, and he's been ejected from it with neither grace nor gentleness.

*

"Really?" Bruce says. 

"Master Clark was right; the piston rings needed replacing," Alfred says. He gets to his feet, wrenches jangling in his coverall pockets. "I just thought I would tighten up the exhaust clamps while I was at it. Thank you, Diana."

"My pleasure," Diana says, and delicately lowers the car back onto the concourse.

*

Alfred and Clark get on famously, of course, and as much Bruce wants to think that Alfred is doing it just to spite him, he isn't where Bruce learned his pettiness. He's probably standing by long tradition and trying to set an example. Watch and learn, Master Wayne. This is how you form a meaningful relationship.

He wonders if Alfred understands that he can't stop at simple friendship, that his emotions run sick in that quarter. Why be friends when you can covet affections, manipulate expectations, demand, demand, demand and give away as little as possible in return. Alfred really should know this.

But Clark smiles at him and thanks him for lunch, and Alfred tells him that he's welcome back any time. Whenever Clark leaves he goes out his way to shake Bruce's hand. Sometimes he even claps Bruce on the arm as he does, like they're old friends.

*

One of the things Bruce quickly learns about Clark is that he worries a lot. He had assumed that Superman was above the intercession of governmental bodies and would continue doing as he pleased, safe in his moral superiority, the world's concerns sliding off him like water.

But, no. He is a man who is conscious of what kind of impact he has even as he acts unilaterally, from the overarching impressions of the news media, down to the individual he might have accidentally jostled on the street. Not to the extent that it dictates his every move—or stops him being more than a little obnoxious about Bruce's personal space, for that matter—but enough that it's clear that he cares.

(And it cements just how wrong Bruce was, and the _way_ that he was wrong. Superman could shunt the Earth out of its orbit, yes, but it would never occur to him to do such a thing in the first place.

But if it occurs to somebody else, there are people that Clark Kent would move heaven and earth for.)

At present, he's determined to keep a low profile. Bruce is not surprised that he's in no hurry to get back into it. The fervor will be unprecedented. Easy for someone like Bruce Wayne, who deliberately courts controversy—or the Bat, who simply doesn't care—to shrug off, but not so much for the cornfed small-town guy who isn't an unfeeling demigod after all. 

But hayseed or not, he's still Superman and all that entails. He has his rituals of nervousness, might hesitate to catapult himself back into the limelight, but he can still right a derailing train, calm an avalanche, surreptitiously foil any number of petty crimes without revealing himself. He's hiding, but he's still _doing_ , and Bruce certainly doesn't begrudge him the shadows.

He's very different from the unknowable titan of Bruce's imaginings, just as he's different from the Clark Kent who shook Bruce Wayne's hand and then dragged the Bat over the coals without hesitation. And those conceptualizations of him are different again from the genuinely pleasant, somewhat absurd man who has lately developed a habit of floating upside-down near his Cave's ceiling and vexing his bats.

Clark, in his delight, doesn't seem to care how ridiculous Bruce finds it. "Don't you have a home to go to?" Bruce calls up to him. He sets about scanning a set of prints he lifted on tonight's patrol, queues up his database to start cross-referencing.

"I thought maybe you'd like to share your notes." Clark's voice echoes down, pulled into deep, carrying tones by the Cave's acoustics. "I noticed you've been snooping around S.T.A.R. Labs lately."

"That's really none of your business." Bruce glances at the clock in the corner of his screen. It's 4:26 a.m. and he tied a bow on one of his long-term cases several hours ago—two of Gotham's crime families letting their feud slop over into the city proper in the form of a series of interlocking extortion rings. Mop-up could have been less messy; there are things he'd rather have done with the remains of his evening than chase soldati through Gotham's storm drains. 

He only just managed to get cleaned up before the other two convened upon him for a pow-wow. Clark actually called it that, to his face. Maximum aggravation thus achieved, Diana left, but apparently Bruce paying more attention to his computer than to Clark wasn't enough of a hint.

"Alright," Clark says, ever accommodating. He twists languidly, righting himself in an unconscious gymnastic display as he descends. "I guess."

A thought occurs to Bruce, one that serves to snap a connection into place. It's usually a satisfying feeling. "How long have you been fighting with Lois?" he asks.

"What?" Clark says. His voice slides up in pitch. It's incredibly unconvincing, moreso now that Bruce knows whip-smart he is along with the rest. "We're not fighting. Why do you think we're fighting?"

"You're doing everything you can to avoid going home. There are only so many conversations you can have with indifferent chiropterans."

"It's hard work sometimes, but you're not so bad," Clark says. Then, slightly strained, "It's… it's not great. Things are weird and I don't know why."

Bruce considers some words of sympathy, but finds himself lacking. He's burned through enough nascent relationships to warrant his own retrospective in a full-color pull-out supplement courtesy of _Gotham Tattle_ , but that doesn't mean he knows what the right thing to say might be. Quite the opposite, in fact. 'Sorry' would be enough, perhaps, but it also might be an invitation to talk about it.

Bruce finds that he particularly doesn't want to talk about it. "I've been asking around for Silas Stone," he says instead, loads up the same horrifying footage he's seen a dozen times. Bruce pauses it with a tap of the screen. The remains of a young man, pinned like an insect. The strange box and its liquid geometry, caught mid-flux. "I want to talk to him about this beauty, but even making a nuisance of myself under the guise of company relations, he's proving difficult to get a hold of."

"No kidding." Clark leans over; his arm presses against Bruce's, shoulder to elbow. "If I were him, I'd be highly cautious about talking to anyone about anything. Human vivisection aside," he says with a wince, "that's clearly alien technology."

"Really," Bruce says, dry. Clark's helpfulness sometimes consists of stating the obvious. Appallingly, it actually _does_ help on occasions where Bruce has chased his own hypotheses down a rabbithole—but not so much today. "Kryptonian?"

"I'm pretty certain that it's not." Clark sounds vaguely disappointed for some reason. "I can't be much help where that's concerned."

Bruce grunts and rubs at his eyes with the knuckle of his thumb. Clark's arm still hasn't moved, his warmth blazing through the performance weave of the Bat's suit like there's nothing between them at all.

"Sorry," Clark murmurs. He shifts away, only to connect again with a brief pat of Bruce's shoulder. "Goodnight, Bruce."

*

Bruce can always feel him before he hears or sees him—minute changes in atmospheric pressure, the displacement of air like the faintest breeze. Stealth is not one of Clark's strong suits.

It makes the hair on the back of Bruce's neck stand up, every time.

"Your extortion ring? I thought you were done with that."

"So did I," Bruce says. "Hello, Clark."

"It's Kal. Hi." He flashes Bruce a grin and then leans on the desk to cast a critical eye over the screen. Goddamn muckraker, through and through. "So what's the deal? Is that the—you have access to the _GCPD_ —why am I surprised, of course you have access to their network."

"I work there weekends," Bruce says. It makes Clark glow in a way that's become all too familiar already. Bruce clears his throat. "Some of the evidence against Galante's men hasn't been logged on the system. Someone's dirtying up the process." He hits the refresh key one last time and harder than he needs to. "Chain of custody is beyond saving, at this point."

"Corruption in the GCPD? Say it ain't so."

"It's no surprise that Galante's got someone on his payroll. Just thought Gordon would have kept a weather eye on things. I want to know who it is before Panessa or his underboss gets wind of it." He puts his machine to sleep and swings around in his chair.

He's taken aback by Clark's presence every time—how unassuming he makes himself, and yet he could fill a room without even meaning to. He's got a hint of the fantastic to him, certain obscure things that Bruce still can't pin down. His faded denim and rumpled button-downs no longer disguise it from him.

Clark blinks at him. Bruce frowns and stops staring just as abruptly as he started. 

"So—next move?" Clark asks.

"Put out feelers. Do you know where _Sionis Below_ is this week?"

"I don't even know where it was last week," Clark says slowly, as though Bruce has just asked him a riddle. "Mostly because I don't know what it is at all."

"I know." Diana, soft-footed on the steel tread of the staircase. She is as effortlessly graceful as always; hair in a sleek braid, gold at her neck and wrists. Her blouse drapes in luxurious folds, the cave's uplights diffusing softly over the silk. Bruce wonders how a tenebrous creature like himself has managed to gather such radiant beings to him. It's bordering on farcical.

"Really?" He turns a smile on her as she approaches. "It's no place for a lady."

"It's no place for a gentleman, either."

"Touché." He lets his smile spread, knits his brow. It's a practiced expression that reads as rapt attention—fascination almost. It's usually a successful gambit, but if it didn't work on her the first time then it certainly won't work this time either. Not now that they have a more accurate measure of each other. He still feels compelled to try. "So, since you'll know what you're in for, can I convince you to accompany me?"

"Bruce," Diana says. There's a faint note of disapproval in her voice that makes Bruce suddenly certain that Alfred has been sharing all manner of heinous anecdotes with her. "No. Even if you stop doing that with your face."

Clark laughs. If he finds anything inappropriate in Bruce's flirting, he doesn't show it. "Bad habit, huh, Bruce?" 

"A deliberate habit," Diana says. She smiles ruthlessly. "Perhaps you should take Kal with you, Bruce. With his particular skills, he will be less ornamental." She pauses delicately. "And you certainly should, if it's merely company you desire."

Bruce turns his expression onto Clark instead, who all of a sudden doesn't seem to find the situation quite so entertaining. Clark clears his throat. "What is _Sionis Below_ , exactly?" he asks.

"It's a nightclub," Bruce says. He watches something in Clark's soul fold up and die. 

"And it moves location?"

"Yes," Diana says. "That would be on account of the illegal bare-knuckle fighting ring."

Clark mouths a silent 'oh' of understanding. Well, of course, his face says. What else. He seems increasingly uncomfortable about the prospect of being dragged along.

"Spoilsport," Bruce says to Diana. "Last chance. Mission-critical recon; half-naked, sweaty men optional."

Diana wrinkles her nose in polite distaste. "I'm washing my hair."

"I'm sure you can handle it." Clark shrugs. 

Bruce knew he should have said nothing and gone alone from the start. So much for team-building. "I appreciate the vote of confidence," he says with sour amusement.

*

Diana corners him later, as he's about to leave.

"You needn't be so unkind to him," she says. "It's not _his_ fault."

Bruce waits for her to elaborate further. She doesn't.

*

Another morning, another incidence of Diana, feet under her on the couch. Today, she has a glossy antiquities periodical open over her knee. Alfred sits at the desk, a small tangle of electronics spread over the blotter, jeweler's loupe held in one eye.

"...she was focusing on Mesoamerica, which is not my area of expertise, though I know enough to be worried about the artifacts she was seeking. I was concerned when she fell out of correspondence," Diana says, loud enough to carry across to Alfred. "It's a relief to see her name. It would be pleasant to visit her exhibition before the artifacts are returned to Veracruz, don't you think?"

"Who?" Bruce says, passing through into the kitchen, where he finds Clark eating the last bagel. 

He's not sure why his lakehouse has become their de facto headquarters, but the novelty is fast wearing off. He starts mentally sketching up designs for a new base. That he will build very, very far from here. Possibly in orbit.

"June Moone," Diana says. "She curates at the Midway City Museum."

"Who?" Bruce says again. Museum bashes aren't the most tedious, scenery-wise, but there is something uniquely unbearable about historians who have had too much to drink. "I'm busy, I think. Alfred, am I busy?"

"I wasn't inviting you," she says. From the corner of his eye, Bruce can see Clark trying not to smirk.

Alfred looks up from his wiring. "You're far too busy," he says. He clears his throat. "I, however, am due some vacation. I believe I've accumulated a not insignificant amount of time off in lieu. Certainly enough for a weekend."

"I suppose you know your labor laws."

"Absolutely," Alfred says. "God help you if I ever feel inclined to do a health and safety review."

Clark leans over the kitchen bar, chewing. He looks completely at home. Bruce tries to figure out why, exactly, everyone is here. "What's the exhibition, Diana?" Clark asks, around his mouthful of purloined bread product.

"Olmec figurines," Diana says. "Specifically, a pair that contains powerful entities that were once worshipped across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, several millennia ago." Her pronunciation is flawless even if her premise is bullshit. "They commanded devastating magic. I am… not entirely comfortable with them being unearthed."

"Demons in a jar," Bruce says. "I don't think we have much to worry about."

"Master Bruce," Alfred says. "You're currently taking brunch with an extraterrestrial being and an Amazonian demigoddess. Magic seems a rather arbitrary place to draw the line."

"And yet I'm drawing it." He needs another coffee before his skepticism will even glance sideways at such bunk.

Diana spares Bruce a look that suggests being a grown man who doesn't believe in magic marks him as some kind of a fool. "Then Alfred will accompany me. It's decided," she says smartly, folding the magazine away into her clutch bag. "I look forward to it." 

She adjusts her clothes in the manner of someone preparing to leave, and Bruce looks to the ceiling in a silent prayer of thanks. 

"I'll make the necessary reservations," Alfred says, rising as she reaches the door. He takes her hand in farewell, smiling at her over it. She smiles back radiantly. Somewhere behind Bruce, Clark is taken with a coughing fit. Bruce hopes that he chokes. 

"Is Alfred," Clark says, watching as Alfred escorts Diana to her car. He comes to stand next to Bruce, rests a hand on his shoulder even though he has no excuse for it. The expression on his face is incredulous enough that Bruce can almost believe he's doing it absent-mindedly. "Are Alfred and Diana—"

Bruce holds up both hands, belaying the rest of that question. "I'd prefer if you didn't speculate," he says. 

Clark is quiet for long enough that Bruce relaxes the tension in his shoulders. Then he laughs and says, "No wonder you struck out so badly."

*

Clark makes himself useful, finds things to do that mostly keep him out from under the Bat's feet, even if he turns up in person to check in on a more or less daily basis. In the end, Bruce gives him a communicator in the hope it will curb the habit.

It does not.

"Bruce," Clark says, voice close in Bruce's ear. In his bedroom, Bruce stops short with his thumbs in the waistband of his pants. He takes a long, steadying breath. 

"Code names over comms, please."

"I don't have a code name right now," Clark says.

"No names, then."

A light chuckle that makes the line fuzz with static. Bruce kicks off his pants and sits on the edge of the bed. He keeps his hands flat on his thighs. This is infinitely worse than the game of physical brinksmanship they were playing before, unconsciously or not. Clark's voice resonates through him. He will not lie back on the coverlet.

"It's late. What do you want—" he says, just managing to cut himself off on a hard C. Less because no names over comms, more because the name on his tongue is still Clark, not Kal. He squeezes his eyes shut. 

"Sorry. I didn't realize. Did you know that I don't need to sleep all that much?"

"I did not. Incidentally, how do I unsubscribe from _Superman Facts_?"

"No names over comms," Clark says, smug.

"The line is highly encrypted," Bruce says, in the same tone.

"Yeah, I didn't doubt that for a second." Still teasing. Then Clark takes a breath, heavy but not quite a sigh. "Bruce," he says. "The sun is coming up over the fjords and it's catching the ice on the spruce trees. Everything's sparkling. It's beautiful."

"What's happening in Norway?"

Silence from Clark, wind sounds from the comm.

"You can't keep doing this," Bruce says. "You have to talk to her."

"That's the thing." Clark sounds even and bright. He's upset. "We have talked. A lot. I don't think there's much left to say. We're just—I dunno. We're done, I think."

Bruce's immediate thought is: good, one less leverage point. He probably should be ashamed of that, so after a slightly too-long pause, he says, "I'm sorry." 

"Thanks. Watch you don't sprain anything."

Bruce grits his teeth. "I'm sorry," he says again. He manages to sound more sincere this time. "I'm guessing I exacerbated things?"

"You were a point of contention, but don't flatter yourself too much."

Bruce snorts loudly. He hopes it was explosive on the other end. A flicker of movement catches his attention outside. Clark's out there, prismatic through the evening-inflected glass. He floats in the gleaming air above the lake, staring.

"Oh," he says, turning his head aside. "Sorry." His mouth moves; he is a murmur in Bruce's ear. 

"Go home," Bruce says. His skin is prickling. "Let me shower in peace."

"I really don't want to."

Go home? Or let him—

Against his better judgement, Bruce shrugs on a robe and opens the door to him. There's still snow dusting his hair and his shoulders. He smells like the first frost. It's a raw kind of elementalism, and Bruce ruthlessly suppresses the urge to supplicate himself. "Go home, Clark," he says again, heedless of the open door, the mixed message, the wrong name.

Clark reaches up and touches his earpiece, closes the connection with a snap. "Clark died," he says. "My name is Kal El—Ellis." 

"Kal-El," Bruce repeats, and it finally hits him. Of Krypton. Of course. The broadcast, screens hijacked by an alien transmission, the gruesome distorted talking head, demanding Kal-El of Krypton. "Oh—" he says. Oh, _Clark_ , he wants to say, but he suspects that would be the worst thing he could do. 

He lets Clark in. The snow melts into his button-down.

"I wanted a name that meant something still," Clark says quietly. He stands in the middle of the floor and manages to look lost in the space despite his effortless presence. "Not just any old name. One that was still mine, somehow."

"Kal," Bruce says. "You already have a name like that."

Clark exhales. "And that one belongs to an alien, too."

Bruce can feel his patience fraying. Who knew that the Superman would be inclined to self-pity? It's no more attractive on him than it is on anyone else. "Enough of this," he says, a touch too sharply. He takes Clark by the shoulders and frowns at him. "I didn't let you in so I could listen to you feel sorry for yourself."

Then why did you let me in? Clark could ask. And what could Bruce say to that? 

But Clark just says, "I'm sorry," though he doesn't sound it any more than Bruce did. "I'm just—was that supposed to be a pep talk?"

"Did it work?"

"No."

"Then it wasn't."

Clark dredges up a laugh from somewhere. He doesn't shrug Bruce's hands away, but leans into them as though they're the only thing keeping him upright. "You know," he says, "I don't think I've felt less human than I do right now." 

In his resignation and exhaustion, he's never looked more so. Bruce tries to see him as he used to, the aloof, unspeakable Other, but that construct has long since been dismantled, melted down for scrap. He's hurting, Bruce thinks, with a dull ache that sharpens on acknowledgement and spears him with an imperative: do something. 

"What will help?" Bruce asks. 

There's a heavy silence. Clark bows his head, eyes closed. If Bruce grips his shoulders in his hands, keeps him still and leans in, he could kiss him. Bruce thinks, would that help? 

His pulse jumps so hard in his throat that he can taste it. And Clark, he lifts his head as though he can hear it—he can no doubt hear it—and wets his lips like he can taste it as well, or wants to. 

This is not good timing. 

Bruce takes a step back, and Clark lets out a shaky breath. 

"I don't know," he says, but it sounds thin, almost like a lie. "I don't know. Maybe it's time."

"Long past," Bruce says. He rakes his fingernails through the beard at Clark's jaw, ignoring his surprise and the scowl that follows, the surly toss of his head. "Get out of here, get rid of this, and get back into your colors. Find your way home."

*

Clark's voice in his ear, teasing and warm. "Bruce," he says, sometimes like it's an endearment, sometimes like a condemnation. Always like it's a privilege. 

Clark, as unexpected as a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. He looks at Bruce like he'd never put his hand to his neck, like he'd never made him taste his own blood. Snow in his hair and heart on his sleeve, Clark looks at him like all is forgiven. He says his name like a benediction, and all Bruce wants is to put him on his knees again. It feels too much like doing him a cruelty, but there's always been appeal in that. Maybe better for Bruce to break himself on Clark's body instead, though that would be just as undeserved. 

(He can't because he wants him dead. He can't because he _is_ dead. He can't because he's with Lois. He can't because—he can't, but he's running out of excuses.)

When it happens, Bruce draws out his orgasm for as long as he can, indulging his body in its involuntary convulsions and its racing heart that has nothing to do with fear. And once he can't chase it any more, when he's just a guy hunched over his rucked up pants, mired in cooling sweat and in too much of a mess for any one emotion, he gets up and he gets a grip and he packs a duffel.

The King's tide will be rising soon.

***


	4. Chapter 4

"He ran away," Clark says. It comes out as flat as his coffee.

"Oh, I think that's a little unfair, sir. He merely neglected to tell you he was leaving. Which, as far as his manners are concerned," Alfred says with a jab of his soldering iron, "is true to form."

Clark knows he shouldn't take it personally, but that's easier said than done. Being able to sustain a civil conversation with Bruce doesn't mean that they're friends. Clark tries not to pry into the more intricate chemical reactions of any given person's body, but he's generally aware of basic mood signifiers whether he likes it or not. The dart of electrical impulses and subtle gradations in scent he can ignore, but an individual's breathing and pulse rate are almost intrusive, sometimes.

Especially when they escalate, like, for example, the way Bruce's do whenever Clark is around him for a while. Coupled with an attitude that swings from dryly amicable to prickly through to outright hostile, sometimes verging on something that feels like it could get dangerously physical—Clark can only conclude that, for some reason, he still makes Bruce absolutely furious.

It doesn't matter how hard he tries to break through that; how affable and companionable he is, how much he tries to gentle Bruce with a touch or a kind smile or to defuse things by gently poking fun, the response is more often than not thunderous. There's some heavy air to clear, and Clark finally felt—what. Defeated enough? Alone enough? Ready enough to hash it out, only to find Bruce gone. 

It figures that if he took a step forward too quickly, Bruce would take two back. He just didn't expect him to leave the goddamn country.

He is starting to understand that this is the kind of timing Bruce excels in. He doesn't know why he's surprised, but he _does_ know that he's is tired of feeling like an emotional piñata in all corners of his life. His frustration at trying to connect and being turned aside again and again rises in his chest like a scream, only to collapse back and crush him once again. 

"He really doesn't like me, does he," Clark says, and is promptly struck with mortification. Complaining petulantly to the man who's practically his father is definitely not polite. 

Alfred seems unfazed. On consideration, people have probably complained to him about Bruce a great deal over the years

"I thought you had already established a firm baseline for that," Alfred says briskly. He holds out his hand and Clark obediently drops a diode into his palm. "Do you really think that's the case?"

Personally, Clark would like to set the bar a touch higher than 'not actively trying to kill each other'. He shrugs.

Alfred's brought sandwiches down into the cave for them, after painstakingly constructing enough of them to feed an entire football team. They're cut into dainty triangles. Clark takes one so he doesn't have to say anything, even though he's pretty sure it won't last three bites. Maybe that's why he made so many, or maybe he's made some reasonable, if incorrect, assumptions about Clark's metabolism. 

"It's just that Master Bruce—hmm. How to put this." Alfred gestures, grasping for a particular expression, or maybe how to phrase it tactfully. "He suffers from a certain amount of emotional asceticism."

It's clearly intended to rhyme with 'complete idiocy'. "I had noticed," Clark says.

"There is a part of him," Alfred continues, setting his iron down and cleaning solder from his fingertips with a rag, "that forever remains in Crime Alley. And another, kept in a vitrine downstairs. I daresay he intended to leave yet more of himself in a Kansas cemetery, but up you popped and handed that piece right back to him. I doubt he knows what to do with it."

"He could be less of a jerk about it," Clark says. "Sometimes it's like he thinks I came back purely to sabotage his brooding."

Alfred seems particularly entertained by that, but a little exasperated, as though Clark's missed a more salient point. "Well. I'm sure that he'll return soon enough," he says. "Once he's finished with whatever business suddenly became essential to pursue. Which, I'm sure, has absolutely nothing to do with any interactions you may have had with him recently."

Clark thinks about Bruce, his glare and his barbed tongue and the climb of his heart, the way he keeps telling him to go home, and wishes he could be so certain. He clears his throat. "So, how's Diana?" he asks, changing the subject with so much gracelessness that even Alfred's impeccable manners don't stop from him wincing.

*

Diana is in spectacular form, as it happens, but she isn't afraid to ask for help when she needs it. She calls Superman to Irkutsk when what started as a rescue operation after a sinkhole swallowed an entire city block proved to be a little more… tentacle-y. The thing about sinkholes is sometimes they're caused by misaligned interdimensional portals, and the thing about interdimensional portals is that sometimes stuff slithers out of them.

All in a day's work.

"The civilians are clear. I've tried to communicate with our interloper to no avail," Diana says over her earpiece, keeping him updated as he flies in. The city reels out under him; the sinkhole comes into sight, a giant black maw. "I believe it's sapient, however. It does not appear aggressive. I'd like to try again before we resort to force." 

Octopus-wrestling has never been high on Clark's bucket list. As far as he's concerned, trying for a full nelson on an opponent with that many armpits sounds like a farce waiting to happen. He hopes that it won't be necessary, or the news of Superman's return is going to be accompanied by some very undignified photographs.

"Sure thing," Clark says. "Coming in on your six."

He alights next to Diana, perched sure-footed on a mangled steel beam, lariat glowing softly where it's gathered around her forearm. "Do you see it?" she says.

"Yeah," Clark says. It's rippling around the rim of the sinkhole, its glistering limbs feeling out the perimeter. "It's a lot bigger than I expected." 

"What is it doing?" Diana says, squinting through a snow flurry and the billowing dust that still lifts from the collapsed buildings. 

The creature is curling two of its limbs skyward, tracing idle patterns in a repeating, rhythmic dance. It might be language. Clark thinks about what business a mostly-benign colossal alien squid would have in Siberia, and figures the most obvious answer is probably the most likely. 

"I think it's lost," he says.

*

"Well, that's not something you do every day," Clark says later, back home, legs dangling over the edge of a Metropolis skyscraper. The evening breeze plucks at his cape. He finishes up the remains of his burger as Diana steals the last handful of fries.

"Thankfully," she says, laughing around her mouthful. She still has a spatter of ink across her shoulder, nacreous in the westering sun. "I'm glad we could get it home."

Despite the scale of the destruction, the portal the creature had arrived through turned out to be approximately the size of a soda can, and also some kind of tetracube rotating in non-euclidean space. It made Clark's brain fizz to look at, not helped by the way the creature had compressed itself back through it. It was like watching a parachute deploy in reverse and in slow-motion, while ejecting a lot of shimmering, hunter-green ink.

"Bruce will never believe us," Diana says. 

"We won't even need to embellish all that much," Clark says.

"I wonder how his mission goes."

"I'm sure he's got a handle on it. He always does."

Forty stories down, the traffic carves its way through the streets, blaring horns and the grind of tires on blacktop. Clark listens past that, and then past the tide breaking on the coast, across the vast span of the Atlantic, hears the gulls shouting and the scrape that fishing nets make against the side of a boat, the sound of landed fish jackknifing against a deck, wet wool rubbing against skin, and he finds the vibrations of a distinct heartbeat.

He could assign meaning to the strange synchronicity of Bruce spending time on a trawler, but he's not sure what that would achieve.

"...Kal?"

"Huh?" 

"I said, how are feeling, in yourself?"

"Not bad," he says.

Then he remembers that it's likely that Diana genuinely wants to know and isn't acting out of some societal obligation where she's expecting a 'fine, thanks, you?' response.

"Awful," he says, more honestly. 

He hasn't had a good night's sleep since—well. Since. It's true what he told Bruce: he doesn't have to sleep often. But that doesn't mean he enjoys being awake twenty-four seven, or being pummeled by horrific nightmares when he does manage to clock out. The worst part is that being awake doesn't even stop them all of the time. Sometimes he gets the taste of dirt in the back of his throat, or comes over scraped-out and sick-feeling as though there's kryptonite nearby.

On top of that, after clinging to the scraps of their relationship as though they were going to knit themselves back together again, he finally moved out. Lois struggled to fit him back into her life as much as he struggled to find a life to fit back into, and he thinks maybe that was a lot of the problem. Their pieces changed shape.

And then—then there's the cherry on top of this wretched sundae. Clark doesn't know if he's forgiven Bruce, or if what he tried to do is something that can be forgiven at all. He doesn't have a whole lot of object lessons to draw upon for that. What he does know is that despite himself and despite Bruce's bluntness and stubbornness and his questionable approach to crime fighting, despite the gravitational pull he has on Clark's life—despite his arrogant goddamn _face_ , he actually kind of likes the man.

Except that's not quite right. 

Clark desires his approval. He tells himself Bruce's approval assures his safety. He doesn't dwell on how the thought of Bruce's approval makes him shake with an undefined tension. And isn't that messed up? Surely Bruce should be the one trying to make good with _him_.

(The fact that he gets the urge to slam him against the nearest flat surface sometimes—he doesn't dwell on that, either.)

Clark groans and rubs his face with both hands. Diana, hopefully mistaking his frustration and misery for just plain misery, wraps a sympathetic arm around his shoulder.

"And what are you up to?" he says, just for a change of subject. "Are you headhunting Alfred? Because it's really pissing Bruce off."

"A regrettable consequence," Diana says, though she doesn't seem regretful at all. More sharply delighted, in fact. "But no, I have no need of a manservant. Nor—" Her smile turns sly. "Do I kiss and tell."

"Aah," Clark says. "But you do kiss."

Diana takes his teasing with a lot more grace than Bruce does. "I find Alfred charming company," she says. "He has a most peculiar breadth of knowledge. And we have war stories to trade. He was military, you know."

Clark thinks about the way Alfred regiments Bruce's life, his resourcefulness and particular skillsets, how he effortlessly keeps his cool even in the face of Bruce's simmering anger. "I didn't, though it doesn't surprise me much."

"I knew, even before he mentioned it. I could see it in the way he holds himself." Her grin softens into a pensive smile as she gazes at the cityscape beneath them, at the gilded edges of the skyscrapers. "Why do we allow ourselves love them so?" she says. "Our hearts are just as fragile as theirs. What fools we all are."

He and Diana are alike, in many ways—to a degree that he sometimes forgets how different they can be. She is at peace with her differences, content to set herself apart from mankind. He might let it gnaw at him later, the way she assumes the same of him, but for now he is considering the velocity of a body plummeting from a building just as high as this one, and wondering if there are any buildings in Gotham that are taller than Bruce's pride. His heart squeezes tight. 

"I wouldn't change it," he says.

"No," Diana replies softly, "nor would I." Her grin rebounds. She gets to her feet and gestures for Clark to do the same. "It will be dark soon, and lively in Gotham City. Come."

*

Names lead to names lead to more names; an ever-expanding web of criminals that no doubt Bruce has memorized to an excruciatingly precise degree. He can probably rattle them off like a savant reciting pi to the thousandth decimal. But for posterity's sake and to Clark's good fortune, it seems he's committed them to his database, too. 

"He salts his hashes like they're french fries," Alfred says, keying in an excessively long password. "And has triple-layered protocols if you want to so much as change the wallpaper. He's probably getting an alert right this moment."

"Then you can tell him we're doing his grunt work while he's on vacation," Diana says.

"I'm sure that would go down exceptionally," Alfred says. "There, all set. Do try not to break anything. There's not a lot that would get me fired, but I don't like to push my luck."

"It would only be temporary," Diana says. "He would quickly miss you."

Alfred sighs wistfully. "More's the pity. Let me know if you need any further assistance."

"Thank you, Alfred." Diana's hand lingers over his, just for a second. It's long enough for Clark to twist with bittersweetness. 

He turns his attention to one of the monitors and clicks through mugshot after mugshot, following a chain of known associates. "It's like Facebook for criminals," he says. 

"Marginally more pleasant to read," Diana replies. "At least they don't say anything."

"Oh, have you—" He catches Diana's expression, amusement a fast-running current beneath her tranquil surface. "I suppose you have."

"Regrettably, yes," she says. "It seemed necessary in order to maintain a professional identity. I also apparently have a LinkedIn, though I don't remember signing up for that."

"Nobody ever does," Clark says absently. He has a Facebook—never really used it, but he hopes Lois or Ma deactivated it after his death. He doesn't want to check, either way. Let whatever epitaphs people left there slowly unchain into zeroes and ones. They were never intended for him.

Diana slowly slides the keyboard out from under him. "Shall we?"

"Right." Clark says. He can be maudlin on his own time. He flicks through Bruce's case notes from his _Sionis_ escapade, still jotted on loose leaf and awaiting transcription, since he was in such a goddamn hurry to haul ass. At first glance they're in some kind of cipher. Clark sighs. Then he frowns, and turn the paper upside down—and laughs. It's just stylized shorthand. Some of the squiggles are somewhat erudite, probably Bruce's own augmentations, but he can work with this. 

He dictates while Diana keys, and once they have all the players Bruce deemed relevant, it's back to the rogue's gallery. The cross-referencing algorithm offers up two names. People who know people, who will know who's tampering with evidence.

He writes them on a post-it and sticks it to the monitor, pointedly low-tech. Clark wonders if Bruce will be stiffly grateful for the leads, or if he might unearth some kryptonite and stop his meddling once and for all. 

*

The papers are even more horrendous than he'd anticipated. Clark doesn't have a television, but if he did he wouldn't bother turning it on. 

Lois passes through now and then, dropping off a tie she'd found in the laundry or a mug he'd forgotten, and deposits them on top of the stack of boxes in his new apartment. It's miserable to see her, and miserable to miss her, too. She doesn't look any happier than he does and at first he tries to take her hands or touch her arm. She pulls away from his small comforts, shaking her head.

"I don't have the heart for this," she says. "Clark, I don't have the heart for it."

He spends more time than he probably should at the lakehouse. He can't spend all day every day saving the world, or he'd go crazy, but he can barely stand the emptiness of his apartment—and despite her unwavering sympathy, there's only so many times a day a man should call his mother. 

And it's kind of nice with Bruce gone, to be able to come in through the lake airlock and not be greeted by his clenched teeth and him bluntly asking what he wants. 'Company' never seemed to be a good enough answer. 

*

Bruce rolls back home eventually, unshaven, in a half-dozen layers of wool and waxed cotton and smelling like a lobster pot. He drops his duffel in the middle of the lakehouse floor with a dramatic squelch, and raises his eyebrows, presumably at finding so many people in his house. When Clark sees him, his stomach feels like it does when he decelerates and drops a few thousand feet all at once. 

"What are you doing here?" Bruce says.

"Team meeting," Diana says, from the couch. "I'm glad you could make it this time."

"Who made you team leader?"

"You absconded. I'm just doing my duty as second-in-command."

"Who made you second-in-command?"

"I did," she says. 

"Ah, the prodigal son returns." Alfred, from the slid-back panel leading to the cave. Clark watches the scene unfold with fascination. He didn't think Bruce was someone who could look harried.

"So kill me the fatted calf." Bruce unzips and peels away some of his layers, dropping them in a heap on top of his duffel. "Can't this wait until morning?" 

"It's three in the afternoon," Clark points out.

Bruce just makes a tired, annoyed noise.

"Did you find him?" Diana asks.

Bruce makes another tired, annoyed noise, and to Clark's increasing apprehension, shucks yet another round of soggy knitwear. He's down to a thin t-shirt that is damp enough to cling. 

"I'll take that as a no."

"Oh, I found him." Bruce levers his boots off, leaving moist footprints on the floor. "We had a—hmm."

"An altercation?" Diana suggests.

"A personality clash," Bruce says. And—there goes the t-shirt. There's a bruise ripening across his shoulder blades.

"Sounds familiar," Clark says faintly.

"We have an incompatible sense of humor," Bruce says.

"With respect, your sense of humor is incompatible with most people." Alfred makes a sharp noise of reproach as Bruce unfastens the button of his pants. "Perhaps a shower and a nap, sir."

*

"I thought I told everyone to get out," Bruce says, wandering back into the living space, toweling his hair. He's shaved and smells a lot better, though Clark can still detect a hint of saltwater about him. It makes him think of warm skin and sweat and sends his imagination off on wildy inappropriate trajectories. 

"Everyone did." But Clark stayed, because his desire to see Bruce apparently outweighs his manners. He knows that Bruce will find this suspicious, but on balance, he finds most things suspicious. It's fifty-fifty that he'll guess that Clark is—that his absence has served to kindle Clark's warmth towards him into something fiercer, like an ember caught by the wind.

"Always have to be the exception, don't you."

"My apartment is kind of depressing." It's not an excuse if it's true. Clark hesitates long enough to remind himself that this is a reliable way to get burned, then plows ahead regardless. "Mind if I hole up here for a few hours?"

Bruce slings the damp towel over the back of the couch and retrieves his tablet from the coffee table. He taps at it for a while, and if he were anyone else, Clark would say he hadn't even heard the question. But Bruce is who he is, and he's stalling. After a minute or two, Clark gets his answer. 

Bruce says, "How's the single life treating you?"

He has a way of asking questions while making it abundantly clear when he's not interested in the answer. This is one of those times, but Clark chooses deliberately obliviousness in the face of his indifference. "Not so well," he says, settling awkwardly at the far end of the couch, despite the amount of time he's spent in the same spot over the past few weeks. "I understand why people start drinking."

"Hm," Bruce says, attention already on whatever he's pulled up on his device. Clark is reminded that Bruce's hobbies are unwavering dedication to vengeance and cultivating painful silences.

Clark does his best to transmute it into something companionable while Bruce's heartbeat gradually escalates.

*

A parcel arrives at his apartment a few days later—a housewarming gift or a welcome-back-Superman gift, he's not sure, but there's only one person it could be from. Bruce has sent him a magnum of champagne, ensconced in its own ostentatious silk-lined wooden case.

Maybe it's a sorry-you're-sad, here's-how-I-cope gift. The problem is that even the finest vintage in the world would be about as intoxicating as grape soda to him. He stares at it in dismay for a while. He almost slots his communicator into his ear, but catches it up again and pockets it and picks up his phone instead.

`Funny`, he texts.

`**[18:24] Bruce:**  
?`

`**[18:25] Kal:**  
How much did this cost?`

`**[18:51] Bruce:**  
Google it.`

Clark does. He feels faint at first, and then faintly angry. 

`**[18:56] Kal:**  
I'm not impressed, you know`

`**[19:04] Bruce:**  
I'm not trying to impress you. I'm trying to commiserate.`

Of course he is. Just in the most obtuse way he possibly could. Clark pushes his glasses up so he can press the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. It's the thought that counts, though, right? That's what his ma always taught him. 

(Isn't champagne traditionally celebratory?

"You jerk," he says to his empty apartment, though he's not sure whether he means himself for thinking that, or Bruce for—well.)

`**[19:09] Kal:**  
I have to give this back`

`**[19:27] Bruce:**  
Suit yourself. I'll use it to christen a boat.`

He leaves his phone face-down on the table while he paces, trying to figure out what Bruce's game is. Mocking him, or just inconsiderate? The directness is all him, but the thoughtful thoughtlessness was supposed to be an act. 

Either way, Ma would tan his hide for being so ungrateful. He picks up his phone. `Sorry,` he taps out. `I appreciate the gesture, but it's far, far too much.` He tops the message off with a blushing emoji, just in case.

He could spend the evening waiting for a reply, trapped in a staring competition with a gift that costs as much as the apartment it sits in, but there are better, less frustrating things he could do with his time. There's a cry for help in Wyoming; a bridge collapse in Singapore; debris re-entering the atmosphere that probably won't be trouble, but he may as well do a little housekeeping.

*

"Superman," the Bat says, later. His distorted growl shivers out of Clark's earpiece and straight down his spine. "What's your position."

It's a typically circumspect request for help, but Bruce isn't breathing hard. He hasn't even broken a sweat, as far as Clark can tell. He's immediately cautious. "Trouble?" he asks, ocean rippling beneath him, breaking into the coastline and the jagged silhouette of Gotham.

"Just get here," the Bat says. Yeah, some kind of trouble all right, and Clark suspects it's about to land squarely at his feet. He's been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the post-it appeared unheralded on his refrigerator door. In combination with the champagne—Bruce has mixed messages down to an art. 

Clark finds the Bat on the Vincefinkel Bridge, lurking against a piling under the shadow of one of the towers. He catches the glint of his binoculars trained on the riverbank not far below, where a figure struggles in the odorous mud. A pair of heavies flank the Bat's target, backlit by the sparse streetlamps along the embankment. Judging from the banter they're still at an early stage of the proceedings.

It's clearly not what he's been called here for.

Clark floats downwind. His cape ripples and snaps, the hem of it catching against the Bat's shoulder. "What's the problem?" he asks.

"You tell me," Bruce says stiffly. He makes a show of brushing Clark's cape aside to put his binoculars away.

Clark treads air, arms folded. "I'm not going to play this game with you, B."

"B?"

"Batman sounds silly."

"Whatever you say, Superman."

"Hey, I didn't choose it myself."

"Neither did I."

"No, but you dressed yourself. I'm sure you anticipated that the tabloids would have no imagination." Below, the riverbank mud sucks at the heavy's bootsoles; he winds up to kick his victim in the stomach. Clark winces in anticipation. "Are you going to…?"

Bruce gives a brisk shake of his head. "I need a name."

"I want a name," one of the heavies echoes from below.

"I don't know anything!" the man in the mud howls.

"He doesn't know," Clark relays.

"He will."

The heavy flips the guy over and presses his face into the riverbank. He squirms, one arm thrashing, leaving thick rills in the muck. Clark can hear the choked edge to his breath and finds himself poised to intervene. From a side-on glance, Bruce seems content to watch. 

Clark makes a concerned noise in his throat and gathers himself. 

Bruce grabs a fistful of his cape before he can move, tethering him. "Either that guy gets a name out of him," he says, "or I do. And I won't be any friendlier."

A massive heaving breath, and the man in the mud holds up an arm in surrender. He coughs and spits out mud. Clark can hear it gritting between his back teeth. "Okay!" he says. "Okay. Spencer. You want Spencer, not me."

"Spencer?" Clark says.

Bruce's eyes narrow. "Detective Spencer." He shifts, muscles coiling, then he launches himself off the bridge and into a plummeting freefall for breath-stopping seconds—Clark twitches, firmly reining in the impulse to pluck him out of the sky—before the Bat's cape snaps out and he glides, circles, sends out a wire.

"You're welcome," Clark says. 

A billow of smoke expands around the three men below, eerily bright in the dusk, pearlescent and limned by the streetlamps. Bruce swings into it like a wrecking ball. "Would I have had more luck with a crate of beer?" he says. The muffled sound of a boot hitting a face reverberates in Clark's earpiece.

"Huh?" Clark mentally backtracks until that stops being a non-sequitur. Ah. "Probably more my speed," he says. "Wouldn't get me any drunker, though." More _luck_?

"Run," Bruce growls, bassy and terrifying, not intended for Clark. The smoke dissipates, and he's gone. The guy who was being worked over is limping away at speed; his assailants are cuffed to the embankment railings. There's a sharp sound over his communicator: Bruce clicking his tongue. "Of course," he says. He sounds—not surprised, so much as annoyed at himself. 

*

The next night Bruce calls him to a jewelers, shutters bent and cubes of glass spread over the sidewalk, refracting like diamonds under the sodium streetlamps. He's engaged a woman in black leather and feathers and not much else.

There's the whistle of sliced air, and the Bat ducks and rolls. She's claw-tipped and whipcrack-fast, but the Bat is faster. Stronger, too, and infinitely resourceful. There's no reason Clark can see why he hasn't subdued her already. He frowns. He's mostly certain that Bruce wouldn't make him privy to what amounts to some messed-up foreplay, but they way he's almost toying with her is suspect.

"Hot date?" Clark asks, just in case.

The Bat grunts and dances back to avoid another slash of those wicked claws. "Grab her," he demands.

Clark shrugs, touches down to do just that, and the woman whirls, wide-eyed under a shock of white hair. He's startled by the lunacy he sees there, in the manic stretch of her mouth, and she strikes at him backhanded while he's distracted.

Her claws break. Something wet slides down his face, dribbling into the corner of his mouth. He grabs her wrist and twists her into a hold, licks at his lips without a second through. His tongue crimps with bitterness and he turns his mouth down.

The Bat approaches, snaps a pair of cuffs around the woman's wrists, tethering her to a railing amidst the drift of broken glass. She coos, dropping into a crouch, apparently transfixed by the glittering mess. Clark wonders that the Bat would have so much trouble with someone so distractible, claws or no.

The Bat aims, fires, zips up to the rooftops. He's calling his collar in to the precinct as Clark drifts down next to him, reciting the address and then cutting the line without ceremony. He glances at Clark side-on. "How are you feeling?" he asks, modulator rendering his voice as unreadable as the rest of him.

A nicety, and an inane one at that. Clark narrows his eyes in suspicion. "Why do you ask?"

"Magpie uses curare," the Bat says, as though that explains everything. He draws a quick finger down the side of his face, indicating.

Clark mirrors the gesture; his fingers come away coated in a viscous substance. "Curare," he says flatly.

"An isoquinoline alkaloid," the Bat says, managing to be both excessively informative and spectacularly unhelpful at the same time. At Clark's insistently blank look, he adds, "a paralyzing poison."

" _What?_ "

"If it had any effect on you, you'd know about it by now."

Clark watches him a moment, the hard line of his mouth, lips pressed together. Maybe he needed Clark's help to take her down, or maybe this is another moving part in one of his grand machinations.

"What if it did affect me?"

"Antidote's in my belt," the Bat says.

"And what if she stuck you with it? B—"

"We've tangled before. I have a failsafe."

"Right." Clark says. "It's in your belt."

"There's a generous grace period before it reaches full efficacy."

The wind picks up, snapping their capes around them. Below, the traffic moves like a lava flow. 

"You could just ask," Clark says.

"Alcohol has no effect on you." The Bat has turned his face to the city below; his profile cuts an austere silhouette. "Neither do extremes of temperature, point-blank gunshots, a nuclear strike. Nor do toxins and poisons. Is it a complete immunity, or is there a threshold to it?"

"You mean other than—"

"Other than that."

"I don't know," Clark says. It's difficult to predict where this particular line of conversation is headed without catastrophizing. "Why?"

"Professional curiosity," the Bat says.

**


	5. Chapter 5

"How about this," Bruce says, three evenings later, picking up the threads of the conversation like he'd never dropped them. He pulls the cowl off as he talks, combing one hand through his flattened hair. Clark is finding his expression difficult to parse. "I take you out on the town. See if it's possible to get you even a tiny bit tipsy. My treat."

It's not that Bruce doesn't take a left turn in his attitude now and then. He can be as mercurial as anyone, which Clark figures is because he's not used to being a sustained, moderately honest version of himself around people, and occasionally he abruptly tires of it. Or, perhaps more accurately, it's been a long time since he's had people around who slot into this particular social dynamic. People he's supposed to be learning to trust. It's just that when that happens, he falls back on either Wayne's lackadaisical charm or the Bat's truculence to maintain whatever amount of distance he deems necessary. There's not a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram. It gives Clark whiplash something fierce. 

The charm, particularly. When Diana isn't around, doubly so.

"By 'treat'," Clark says, with the requisite amount of suspicion, "do you mean 'experiment'?"

"I can't guarantee it won't be a traumatic experience," Bruce says.

"I honestly doubt it'll work."

"No harm in giving it the old college try, then." 

Clark watches as he strips out of his armor. Is this what he was thinking about all night? This is the meticulous game-plan Clark assumed he was working on behind his monosyllabic responses? Operation: Inebriate Superman. 

Or, considering Bruce's current fascination with the subject, Operation: Establish Superman's Tolerance for Toxins, Poisons and Other Chemical Influences. Data for his knowledge base. Clark feels slightly weary.

"It might take your mind off things. You're distracted lately," Bruce says. He's pressing into Clark's space. It's—distracting.

"I'm flattered," he says. And somewhat terrified at the prospect, he doesn't say. One invitation to a fight club is one too many. "But a night out with Bruce Wayne sounds like it would attract lot more attention than I'm comfortable with."

"I was thinking Midway City, this weekend." The usual frown has smoothed out of his face and he's aggressively dashing all of a sudden—and relentless, carrying on like Clark had agreed with enthusiasm. "Nice and low-key. A museum exhibition. We can crash Alfred's date."

"Bruce," Clark says. "That's awful. We can't do that." He folds his arms in a bid to regain some personal space. It feels over-defensive even as he's doing it, but it's always surreal to have him be like this after all of his angularity. Yet, here he is with sweaty hair and contused knuckles and his demeanor tipped to a rakish degree. 

"Why's that? It's not a private party."

"Isn't it?"

"Well. It could be, but that doesn't matter. I still have a certain amount of cachet."

"Apparently," Clark says, and he can't help it, he's grinning. And he really could do with a change of scenery, even if it's just to satisfy one of Bruce's many curiosities. He'll apologize to both Diana and Alfred later. "I'll—okay, I'll see if I can find something to wear. Is it black tie, or?"

"Optional, probably." Bruce seems to be considering something. "Come with me," he says.

Bruce leads him upstairs into the lakehouse, which is expected, and into his bedroom, which is not. Clark follows hesitantly, the hem of his cape sussurating on the slate tile. Bruce draws aside the wardrobe doors; the lighting inside flicks on to illuminate a uniform row of suit jackets. He selects one—a particular one, despite the fact they all appear identical—and holds it up against Clark's chest.

"What are you doing?"

"No time to get you something fitted. Stand up straighter." He purses his mouth. "Hm, might be too tight across the shoulders."

"Bruce," Clark says, and he means it to be a joke, really, but it's hard to sound amused with the way his chest is fluttering. There is something proprietary about the way Bruce is going about this. "Are you trying to dress me?"

"Trying?" Bruce says "I _am_ dressing you. For both our sakes."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with my fashion sense."

"What you're currently wearing suggests otherwise." He casually drags a finger along a diagonal edge of his crest, nail rasping over the textured weave, and Clark finds his breath has defied all laws of physics and solidified in his throat. 

Bruce remains inscrutable. "Just leave it to me," he says, and turns back to his wardrobe. There's a brisk click-click-click as he leafs through the coat-hangers. He pauses, glances over his shoulder. "You'll need to get yourself out of that."

"I—" Clark begins, then deflates. Bruce approaches everything with such a level of determination that there's no way he's escaping this unscathed. That, and there's a substantial, reckless part of him that doesn't want to protest too hard in case he does actually stop. 

He slides his fingers along the hidden leylines in his suit and lets it ribbon away, then stands there in his plaid boxers with increasing self-consciousness while Bruce takes his time selecting a shirt. As Bruce hands it over, his gaze flicks over Clark from head to toe, just once, and he touches his tongue to his teeth in a way that is openly approving.

Clark's sure that Bruce would like him to think he's getting the Bruce Wayne treatment. He can tell that much, the over-friendly veneer designed to mask whatever his true interest is, but he's missing that crucial distance. Why bother with the charade if Clark knows exactly what it is?

He wonders if Bruce intends it to be verging on cruel.

Clark shrugs on the shirt, and Bruce flattens the fabric down over his shoulders and against his chest. He makes an ambivalent noise. "Not the best fit, but you won't be able to tell with the jacket."

The jacket that is definitely bespoke, and probably expensive enough that Clark can't afford to look at it too long, never mind wear it. He gives Bruce a beseeching look. Bruce just hands him a pair of matching pants, and then a vest, and cufflinks, and a pocket square and button studs and a bow-tie and wow, getting dressed when you're loaded is a huge pain in the ass. If Clark had to primp like this every time he was to be seen in public, he'd probably be a bit of an asshole, too.

"Not bad," Bruce says, once Clark's buttoned, zipped, clipped and tucked all this stuff into place, just the bow-tie left resting over his shoulders because he has no idea how to fasten it.

Then Bruce slips his fingers into the waistline of his pants and runs them along the band to his hip, his knuckles dragging the shirtcloth against Clark's skin. 

Clark stands stock-still. Just checking the fit, he tells himself. He's just checking the fit. He forces himself into calmness while Bruce frowns and mutters, "It'll have to do."

"Belt?"

"Absolutely not. Just stay buttoned."

This time, his fingers tuck between the collar of the shirt and Clark's neck, pulling the fabric taut across his throat. Warm, strong fingers. Can probably feel his pulse. Clark swallows with difficulty.

"This is too tight. Why didn't you say anything?" Bruce says, and immediately sets to unfastening the vest buttons. His pulse is a measured beat, his breathing just so. Regimented, almost. Either he's not annoyed at all, or he has begun dissembling on a physiological level.

"I thought I was leaving this to you."

"Some input is still welcome, Kal."

Clark has some input. Clark thinks that the collar wasn't all that tight, and Bruce would know that. Clark thinks that Bruce may be genuinely invested in dressing him. Clark thinks that his life would be simpler if he could be sure that Bruce was as equally invested in undressing him. 

That is Clark's input. But, "It's fine," he says. 

Bruce's fingers still themselves on the shirt buttons at Clark's throat. He's not sure he can endure much more of this, Bruce handling him with just enough solicitude that he feels like a charity case. As disheartening as his terseness is, at least it's straightforward.

"This is all fine," he says. "It doesn't have to be perfect. It's just one evening, right?"

"Right," Bruce says. A quick flash of his teeth, appraisal in his eyes. He pats Clark's shoulder, or at least starts that way. His hand lingers, then slides down, fingers curling into Clark's lapel. He leans in, and says gruffly, "Take it all off. Leave it on my bed." 

*

"Normally I would let you know just how despicable you are," Alfred is saying as Clark gets back to the living room, his uniform put together even if he isn't. "But I already assumed you wouldn't stand to be left out. Your reservations are at the Midway Grand."

Bruce just nods and crosses one ankle over his knee, like it was entirely expected that Alfred would already have this arranged for him. And maybe it was. Just like the suit Clark's been bullied into will no doubt be dry-cleaned and delivered to his door, even though, technically, he still hasn't told Bruce where he lives.

"A little old," Alfred says, leaning in paternal rebuke, arms folded, "to be mooning over a pretty face, don't you think, sir?"

Bruce's smile is carved from ice. 

Their tableau breaks as soon as Clark approaches. Alfred flashes Bruce an impenetrable look and then makes himself scarce. 

Bruce looks up at Clark from the couch. Over his shoulder, Clark can see the screen of his tablet and the news aggregator he has up, all of this morning's headlines. It's not like Clark expected things to die down at any kind of rate, but the relentlessness of the coverage weighs on him. He's spoken the press, said all there is to be said, but the speculation rampages ever onward. 

"What are they saying about me today?" he asks, even though he doesn't really want to know. 

Bruce puts his tablet to sleep, screen blanking as abruptly as his mood. "The usual. Shocked and awed." He pauses. Clark hears the clear jump of his pulse and braces himself for the inevitable biting follow-up, but— "You can't do anything about that," Bruce says. "It's good that you're back out there."

And after this evening, the way Bruce looked at him, the impression of his fingers still burning his neck, Clark doesn't know what to think.

*

They have the penthouse suites at the Grand: all four of them. The level of opulence is outright obscene. As much as he understand that it's all for show, Bruce's public excesses are something Clark struggles to reconcile with the austerity of his private life. 

Speaking of which. Clark changes into his suit—into Bruce's suit, with all its attendant miscellany, and is once again stymied by the bow-tie. After the third attempt he just leaves it hanging around his neck.

He checks over the rest of his outfit in the full-length mirror, then leans in to sort out his hair.

He's Clark Kent but not. Face bolder, uninterrupted by the bluntness of his glasses. A day's worth of stubble since he kind of got used to not shaving. His hair is a touch too long, curling behind his ears, and he wonders if he should have picked up some product to tame it into something more formal

Bruce will probably have something he could use. He could do his bow-tie for him while he's at it, and he'll probably flirt while he does. Clark can imagine the quick flash of his brows, the practised artlessness of his smile, the Bruce Wayne he met that first time in all his patronizing, magnetic horror. He's going to be unbearable.

It doesn't help that the suit Clark's wearing—he was wrong, it's been pressed, but not dry-cleaned. He can tell, because trace elements of Bruce's scent lingers on it, permeated through the fabric warming against his skin. It's a heady combination of vetiver and musk, mingling with his own body's familiar notes. 

Bruce is meticulous; detail-oriented to a fault. There's no way it was an oversight. No way it isn't deliberate. 

It's several leagues beyond idle flirting.

It finally dawns on him that he may have had a faulty read on Bruce for quite some time.

Clark closes his eyes and lets the realization settle over him. The thunder of Bruce's pulse every time he's near, his shortening breath. How desperately he needs Clark to stay away. Always on the edge of his temper, but—that's not all it is.

God, he's an idiot. Clark sits on the edge of the bed and tries to compose himself, but his senses have shaken loose. He hears the raw silken hush of hair being swept aside, the gentle carillon of a draped necklace, the warm murmur of conversation. 

("How do I look?" Diana says.

"You could drive a monk from his vows, my dear."

"And are you a monk, Alfred?")

The next room over is silent but for Bruce drawing a shirt on; the cloth pulled over his skin sounds like a knife being sheathed.

He has time to take the edge off. It won't take long. He rubs the heel of his hand over himself and is a little shocked at just how hard he is already. He can't pinpoint when it started—maybe in the cab from the airfield, Bruce's knee casually pressed against his while he talked—only that the ebb and swell of it has been a constant throughout the afternoon.

He breathes in through his nose, lets his hand wander and thumb the button of his fly open. He could—he could play a similar game. A bolder one. Get a little come on the suit, give it back to Bruce all messed up. Would he be into that? Maybe. A bit presumptuous, but maybe he'd be into that, too.

It's easy to assume these things about him. Clark takes a enlightening whistle-stop tour through all the things he'd be into Bruce being into, and comes in his cupped hand, breathing hard. He waits until he can stand, then tries his best to clean up and look like he's not just jerked off, which mostly consists of splashing his face with water and looking worried. 

Eventually he gives up and slips out of his room. He hesitates a second, then gives Bruce's door a confident rap. Maybe too firm, so he does it again, less demandingly. Then he wonders if that was too soft and raises his knuckles to try again. The door opens.

"Kal," Bruce says, as though he'd been expecting him. Pants and shirtsleeves and stocking feet, hair not done yet, fresh cologne settling at the base of his throat. The name still sends a thrill up Clark's spine—it always sounds vaguely threatening on Bruce's tongue. He knows that it's alien.

Without quite managing to make eye contact, he catches the ends of the bow-tie up and flaps them at him. "Help me out here?"

Bruce shakes his head and steps back obligingly, gesturing for Clark to come into his room. There's a thread of alcohol on his breath and a whiskey bottle from the minibar on his nightstand.

"Getting started early?" Clark asks as Bruce flips up his collar.

"Fortification," Bruce says. "You haven't known boredom until someone tries to explain the nuance in various megalithic stelae interpretations before you can get a hold of the first glass of champagne."

"Why did you want to do this again?" Clark says. Bruce's thumb brushes the underside of his chin as he winds his tie through a choreography of folds and twists, then pulls it into shape.

"You could use it," Bruce says. "And to bother Alfred."

"I thought you did that as a matter of course."

"It's nice to go above and beyond sometimes." Bruce's hands rest on Clark's shoulders. His breath smells rounded with drink, spicy. "Keeps things fresh."

"I worry about you and your relationships," Clark tells him with all earnestness. 

Bruce only grins at him. "You clean up well, Kansas," he says. Then, in a low rumble that's no less devastating for being patently deliberate, "You look great."

"Oh god," Clark says, grinning back, shaking his head. He does his best to look unaffected, though the back of his neck burns. "Please stop."

Bruce conjures up an innocent expression and then collapses back into his usual self, give or take a few degrees of calculated smouldering.

Clark pushes his fingers through his hair. "What am I going to do with this? Any ideas?"

Bruce shakes his head. "It's fine," he says, reaching to twist a thick curl around his finger. He lets it drop onto Clark's forehead. "It's a good look on you."

*

The foyer of the museum is lit like a snowglobe, a bright sphere imbued with flecks of light that refract like gold leaf over the vaulted ceilings, drifting down the walls and columns. Diana, in vambraces like jewelry and a phthalo green dress that accentuates her shoulders and swoops dangerously down her back, has already struck up a conversation with someone she appears to know, Alfred on her arm.

Bruce, true to his word, has acquired two glasses of champagne and is striking towards Clark, who has located the nearest potted palm and made friends with it. He's working on trying to hide without looking like that's what he's doing—smiling at anyone who smiles at him, nodding politely, but generally trying to blend in with all the other black ties. High-society camo. While he was doubtful about leaving his hair in the state it is, slicking it back would probably have made him feel even more exposed.

"Here," Bruce says, and hands him a glass. "Down it."

Clark takes the flute delicately between finger and thumb, sips from it first, then swallows down the rest. He's not got much of a taste for champagne. Inability to metabolize alcohol aside, it's often unpleasantly dry and he doesn't care for the carbonation, which results in a generally mediocre experience as far as the cost-to-pleasure ratio goes. 

(Maybe he should have just told Bruce that in the first place. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.)

He licks his lips and grimaces. Bruce tilts his head minutely, as though he's unpicked a particularly knotty puzzle. "You don't even like the taste," he says. 

"Not really," Clark admits, a little reluctantly. 

"I didn't consider that." 

Sounds suspiciously like an apology. Clark smiles at him, shrugs. 

"Well, that's too bad." He exchanges Clark's empty glass with his own, and then catches two more flutes from a passing tray. 

"Whether I get drunk or not, at this rate I'm going to spend most of the evening in the men's room," Clark says, tilting his glass in a toast.

Bruce looks at him and slowly, speculatively, raises his eyebrows. Their glasses meet with a delicate chime. "I'll drink to that."

Clark shakes his head. "No wonder your dates are so eager to kiss and—" He falters and then snaps his mouth shut, only opening it again to down the second flute and, with some resentfulness, the third. Bruce only sips from his glass with tempered amusement. It would be easy to believe that he's in his element, but Clark can practically hear the tension creaking in his bones.

Clark looks across the foyer just so he doesn't have to deal with Bruce's face while he comes to terms with the fact that this is, if not for all intents and purposes then at least for a few of them, a date.

Diana is by a glass display case, talking to a couple—he doesn't mean to eavesdrop, but he inadvertently catches enough to know it's June Moone and her companion, who is apparently just as uncomfortable as Clark is, if the way he keeps scanning the exits is any indication. Dr. Moone herself is a petite blonde woman who seems... curiously _off_ in her bearing, in a way he can't put his finger on. 

Bruce follows his gaze. "Is that Diana's archeologist friend?" he says, casually tipping what's left of his champagne into Clark's glass.

"Yeah."

He observes her for a second, and then drops all frivolity like a bad habit. "Something's not right," he says. 

"I'm glad it's not just me." 

Diana turns at that moment and catches his eye. Something is definitely not right, plain by the look on her face. She excuses herself and makes her way over to them, and Clark takes the opportunity to water the potted palm while Bruce's attention is on her.

"The figurines on display are replicas," Diana says quietly. "I don't like it. Help me find the real ones."

Clark blinks and the world peels itself back. He's momentarily overwhelmed by the bodies around him: the bunch and striation of muscle; the tangle of nervous systems; the lurch of internal organs. 

He closes his eyes for a moment and breathes, then asks, "What am I looking for?" His vision drags over to Bruce. There's all kinds of gear secreted beneath the flawless lines of his suit: tracking devices in his French cuffs; nylon wire in his pocket, gas pellets; caltrops; the bright void of a lead box. His bones are dense with repaired fractures, plated and pinned in some places. One cuspid and two molars are cosmetic. 

Embarrassed at the trespass, Clark glances away.

"Collections vault?" Bruce says.

"Most likely." Diana touches her ear. Bruce nods and mirrors the gesture. 

Clark hears the minute ping of the comms coming online, and then Alfred's too, where he's gamely engaging Dr. Moone and her partner in some authentic British smalltalk. The weather seems to be of infinite fascination to everyone involved. Clark hears him excuse himself, and Diana breaks away to mingle in the crowd. 

"Okay," Clark says under his breath. He pushes his vision out against the walls, the rooms beyond shuttering into view with a flat, rotoscoped quality. "East wing," he says, "double doors, second left, then down." Diana immediately heads over to the set of heavy doors there, sorting through her clutch as though to find a cell or a compact, pushing them open with her hip like she's not really thinking about it.

Bruce follows, Clark not so subtly on his heels. Nobody here will care enough about them to talk.

"Alfred," Bruce says.

"I'll keep everything in hand up here, sir."

*

Bruce slots a swipecard into the vault's security and does something with the keypad that makes it spit out a long sequence of pips. He swipes the card a second time, punches in a code, and the door unlocks with a sonorous clunk. He tucks the card back into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.

"Do you take that everywhere?" Clark asks.

"I take a lot of things everywhere," Bruce says, following Diana as her heels click over the parquet floor. 

They find the idols quickly. Diana seems to have a decent idea of where abouts they might be stored in the forest of archival drawers and mobile shelving, and it's just a case of Clark taking a peek so they don't have to set the powered shelves rumbling on their tracks. Bruce, hands in pockets, meanders around the rest of the storage units.

"I think I got them," Clark says to Diana, holds one hand atop the other about six inches apart. "About so tall, made of fired clay, I think? There's a bunch of them in this drawer." He raps on the cabinet.

"That's right," she says, "thank you, Kal." She casually tugs the drawer open. Clark hears the lock give way with a crunch.

Then she takes a step back. Her heart thumps hard.

"Oh, hello," he hears Bruce say from a few aisles over, in a lazy, agreeable drawl. "Fancy meeting you here."

Clark glances over at Diana to see if she's as alarmed by Bruce's abrupt shift in register as he is, but she's still staring at the artifacts in their padded drawer.

"A bit far from your usual stomping grounds, Mr. Wayne." A woman's voice, authoritative to the core. Bruce comes into sight around the edge of a shelving rack, walking backwards, hands still in his pockets.

"Well, you know what they say, a change is as good as a rest." Bruce glances over his shoulder, then back at the imposing woman who's herded him around the corner. She's wearing an indigo pant suit like it's battle armor, spike heels to kill. "To what do I owe this…" And Clark knows the expression he must be pulling as he pretends to cast about for words, polite consternation as window-dressing for his disdain. "This? Ms. Waller?"

"That's Director Waller to you, Mr. Wayne," Waller says, frowning at Diana first, then Clark, and then back at Bruce with caustic suspicion that would melt a lesser man where he stood. "Why are you here?"

"Well," and Bruce turns side-on, casually bringing them all into the conversation. "My lovely lady friend and her boytoy here promised to show me some fetishes."

Clark very much expects a gold star for keeping his face straight over every element of that sentence.

Waller fixes Bruce with a look that falls short of disgust, but only barely. He parries with an impenetrably vapid smile. Then he leans forward and starts to explain his joke. Waller cuts him off with a raised hand and a very tired sigh.

"Okay, if that's how it's going to be. Get back upstairs, Mr. Wayne," she says, and turns. "I expect to find you and your… friends, present and accounted for and not in any restricted areas for the rest of the evening." 

"Yes, ma'am," Bruce says, rocking on his heels. Clark feels subtly mocked.

Waller favors him with another withering glare and sweeps an arm toward the door: please leave. 

Bruce shrugs and finally takes one hand out of his pocket to spread on his chest, bowing slightly to Waller as they file pass. It would probably have been quite charming if it he weren't being transparently rude.

Clark has a lot of questions, mostly about who Waller is and how she knows Bruce Wayne, and why it felt like she saw straight through him. He's just about to ask, but as soon they're out of earshot Diana gives her head a shake. 

"It was broken," she says. Her pulse is still tripping quickly, percussive in Clark's ears. "This is incredibly bad. She must be free."

Bruce frowns. "Who is?"

Clark's hearing is suddenly muted; the everyday static of background noise vanished away as though he's been plunged into deep water, a bubble of sensory deprivation that makes him gasp. He brings his hands up to his ears, as though he can displace the pressure of the silence. Bruce grabs his arm and he sees rather than hears him say, "Kal?"

In this chamber of stillness, a terrified voice whispers: _Enchantress_.

—and sound rushes back at him full force, a loud peal of thunder as the museum seems to shift on its foundations. The walls shudder and stretch; their surfaces fragment into craquelure.

"Alfred?" Bruce says, tension riding his composure. He breaks into a run, back upstairs. "What's going on?"

"It's unclear. Master Bruce," Alfred says, audibly shaken. "Might I suggest—"

Another wrench from deep under their feet; masonry dust rains from the ceiling.

"Yes, yes, you might," Bruce shouts, hand up over his head as he skids against and then through the double doors. "Get everybody out of there, Alfred."

"I'm doing my best," Alfred says. "There's some confusion as to whether this is part of the evening's entertainment."

An individual might be smart, but crowd psychology is a hell of a thing. "We will have to upset them more," Diana says, grabbing Clark's arm. She points up at the ceiling. He lets his vision swell, heat bursting from him in a wave. The fire sprinklers explode overhead, alarms adding their shrill klaxon to the din, and a rising wail goes up from the foyer. They pelt onward through the cold spray to where Alfred is herding the last of the sodden guests toward the exits. 

The center of the hall is drawn up around a being; a lank, hypermobile form that makes Clark think of mangrove roots and oily water and the way smoke rises from a doused fire. The architecture melts into her as though she's a crucible.

She dances in erratic stanzas, her movements stilted and uncanny, threading in on themselves, limbs cast like boughs in the wind. Clark's skin crawls. He is compelled to stare, regardless. She flings out one whipcord arm and captures a fleeing guest, and before Clark can wrench himself into action, she dips the man and looms, spreads her mouth over his, sips his scream away. His head ruptures like a sporing fungus.

"Jesus," Bruce breathes. He skirts the perimeter of the hall, stance low. "More of them back here," he says over the comms; the Bat is here, even if Clark can see the white flash of his dress shirt. "She's transforming people—what are they?"

"I don't know," Diana says, moving cautiously to cover the opposite side of the room. She steps out of her heels, draws her lariat from her purse, throws the purse aside. "They obey her."

"I have the majority of attendees outside," Alfred says, over their commlink. "Authorities are on their way, so whatever it is you plan to do, do it quickly. What on Earth is going on in there?"

"I'll let you know when we figure it out. Keep your head down in the meantime." Bruce continues his circuit of the hall. "I'm going to draw one of them over, I want a closer look at what we're dealing with here." 

Diana nods, her brows drawn fiercely. "The people affected, you think they could still be saved."

"I hope so."

Bruce darts out from behind a column, drags one of the creatures back into the relative shadows with an arm across what's left of its throat. He is efficient, silent and swift.

Every other creature in the room immediately freezes and turns in his direction in hive-like knowing.

"Oh," Bruce says, "shit."

**


	6. Chapter 6

The creatures erupt into a frenzy of limbs and bow-ties and viscous muck, surging towards Bruce as one. Clark doesn't even think: he plunges into their midst and heads towards the dancing woman, lets the creatures rain against him without raising a hand. In his periphery, Diana moves to cover Bruce, deflecting their rabid clawing with easy sweeps of her arm. Her vambraces spark when she strikes a watch or a necklace.

And Bruce—Bruce runs.

"Kal," he barks down the earpiece, hitch in his breath. Clark hears a seam in his suit rip as he takes a running jump against a wall, pushing off to clear a fan of grasping hands. "Think you can take out the witch?"

"Already on it," Clark says, brushing one of the creatures aside; it staggers into two more and sends them sprawling. The witch contorts, weaving whatever magic keeps them under her yoke. She's as brittle as bark, thin limbs and thinner armor, but there is nothing delicate about her power. Clark is not naive enough to think she'll go down easily, but he has only one approach to situations like this.

He leaps toward her, floor shuddering as he lands at her feet. He grabs one bony wrist, mid-flourish. Her skin is the texture of wet clay.

An aura cracks into being, fragmented around her in kaleidoscopic rays. Clark's bones freeze. Her eyes are waxing crescent moons. Her smile, primeval. She drags her fingers down his face. He is entranced.

He hears Diana shout, a moment after Bruce does. They echo in his earpiece, reverberating.

And feed back, repeating with fading intensity.

And twist into a digital burr that lifts Clark from sleep. His heart is quick with adrenaline but soon subsides under the haze of the early-morning sun. 

Strange dream, he thinks. 

He rolls over to silence the alarm; it's the same one he's had since he was a kid, the same pulse-jolting buzz. He used to set it on weekends just for the pleasure of turning it off and going back to sleep.

At his back, Bruce grumbles and pulls at the sheets and the old wool blanket that smells like the hayloft. Everything has a golden sheen at this hour, burned around the edges like an old Polaroid picture, and Clark feels a deep contentment in his heart. He rolls back and leans over to kiss behind Bruce's ear, then the corner of his jaw, coarse with bristle. "Morning," he murmurs.

Bruce smiles, eyes closed, the corners crinkling with fondness as he turns against Clark's chest, pushes him over onto his back, straddles him. "Hey," he says, rough with morning and muffled against Clark's mouth. The bed creaks and Clark's eyes drift shut. He breathes softly, giving himself over without a thought, even though it's not like Bruce to be so demonstrative. Not like him to be so—

Not like him to—

It's comforting; Bruce's warmth, the familiarity of his crow's feet and the way his mouth gradually slackens, the rhythm of his tough, steady hands. The noises he makes.

He can smell bacon frying, hears his ma in the kitchen singing along to the radio. Outside, the distant scrape of a shovel where pa's mucking out. It's a comforting memory.

Except, Bruce has never been here. He's never been part of—

Bruce groans against his shoulder. A knot of misery pulls tight in Clark's chest. He opens his eyes.

Her eyes, like a lunar eclipse. Her mouth over his, a taste of ancient earth that crumbles into his lungs. His skull cracks and she works it open, burrowing in. He tries to struggle, but can't.

"What is this?" she says in a voice like quicksand. "You are not like the others."

Clark's body strains against its inertia. Sweat breaks over him in shivering waves and the hears himself make a desperate bleat of panic. Her fingers rasp over the folds of his cortex, reading him like braille.

"No matter," she says. "You are still flesh. My brother will enjoy your strength."

She settles him on his feet and turns him like he's a child, her breath lingering in his ear as she whispers to him.

"Break them, and bring them to me. Then find my brother's vessel."

Clark's body moves outside of his doing—ponderous, as though his joints have ossified. He has Bruce in his sights, tracking him as he travels across the museum floor, countering the creatures that grasp at him with swift jabs and nerve pinches or a leg sweep to put them on the floor. They twitch and scrabble, but Clark's attention is on Bruce himself; the fluid, disciplined choreography of his movements.

He's heading straight towards Clark in a state of pure and fearless purpose.

No, Clark tries to shout. Stay away. But his tongue is dead in his mouth, and then Bruce is on him.

Clark swings at him. It feels slow, laborious, and he realizes the witch— _Enchantress_ , the intrusion demands, bringing him the smell of blood-soaked earth and the taste of rain—she may puppet his body but she doesn't know how to tap into his speed, and his fist connects with Bruce's forearm with dreamlike ineffectuality. Bruce grunts and staggers back. So his strength is there, some of it. It's just a matter of time until she figures the rest out. 

A matter of time until he feels the heat crawl behind his eyes and he vaporizes everything. Everyone.

Go, he tries to say as his arm pulls back of its own volition, winds up for a more powerful swing. Bruce's eyes bore into his, and there is fear there, but only in the vestiges, chased back by his relentless determination. His hand is inside his jacket, grasping for something, and Clark has never wanted to yell at someone the way he wants to yell at Bruce right now. Unprepared and underdressed, his gadgets can't save him from this.

Something wraps around his cocked fist, coiling down his arm. A golden strand of light yanks him off-balance.

"Release him!" Diana demands. 

Clark hisses and strains against her bondage. She kicks the back of his knees out and he cracks the floor with his palms as he goes down. A wave of nausea breaks over him like the young rush of a fever, and he struggles to move himself. Then he does move, but not the way he wants—he tries to lash out, twisting to grab at Diana's lariat, but somehow Bruce keeps him on his knees with only one hand.

"Who are you?" Diana says. Not to him, but to the creature cloaked in soot and embers. "Name yourself."

Clark Kent Kal-El Superman June Moone—

An ancient name in a dead language. "Enchantress," says the witch. He feels the vibrations in his throat, hears his own voice layered over it like an echo. 

His fear mounts and swallows him whole. He wants to fling himself away from the sound.

"What do you want?"

To help to save to protect to be free to be freed my brother my brother help me help me help—

"To be worshipped," Clark's voice says, imperious over strata of whispers. Bruce's face holds dread and contempt in equal measure.

The rope slips free and Clark's muscles spasm and lock. His bones feel like they are splintering inside of him, the marrow turned to soup, and the Enchantress is shrieking in his skull. He nestles into the pain, hoping that will somehow alleviate it. It doesn't. 

He's being hauled up, his back propped against a column. Bruce comes back into his eyeline, crouching next to him. "I'm sorry," he says, but his face is thunderous. The shake in his voice sounds more furious than apologetic. He opens his fist. A fragment of kryptonite rests in his palm. Every part of Clark's body wants to recoil, but all he can do is exhale a wet sob. 

Bruce's hand smooths over his hip as he tucks the kryptonite into the pocket of Clark's suit. "Don't try to move," he says, as though Clark has any choice in the matter. He grips Clark's shoulder—stalwart camaraderie to go along with the poison—then brushes his temple so gently it could have been an accident. His dress shoes creak as he springs back to his feet, back into the fray.

Clark slumps to the floor so he can curl in on himself. Its fragmented surface is sharp against his cheek. His eyes have started blurring and watering but he can pick out Diana's vibrant dress against the bright flare of the Enchantress' magic. 

There's shouting, Bruce barking out strategy that layers disorientingly when its repeated over the comm in his ear, along with some explosive breathing that Clark isn't certain is his own or an echo of everyone else's. Heavy thuds of combat, ricocheting metal and the heave of masonry. There's tension in his body, roaring like a wave about to break. 

He's straining to catch more in an attempt to understand what's going on when the pain coursing through him suddenly converges in the center of his chest. His heart feels like it's bristling with needles. 

" _Waller_ ," Bruce yells, "get—"

—and then, like smoothed sand in the wake of a receding tide, there's nothing. 

At the very bottom of his fear his mind grows quiet, a moment of tranquility before his body convulses again. His limbs shudder as the intruding presence makes one last attempt to move him, then is ripped from his mind, leaving him wallowing in a green sickness instead. He writhes and he gasps, and then slams headfirst into unconsciousness.

*

"—need a car, Alfred, now."

There's an arm around his waist, keeping him moving. Bruce is breathing hard. The heavy pall of the kryptonite is gone, but he still feels its poison in his blood. His mouth tastes like dirt. 

There's shocked, upset crying, dozens of people. Diana's voice among them, calming them with a reassuring authority.

Are they okay, he tries to ask. He can't get his mouth around the words. They're an incomprehensible slur.

"Very well, sir. There's a fire exit not far from your position. Give me three minutes and—"

*

"Come on," Bruce is saying, frustrated. Clark tries to help but his limbs are as heavy as the earth's crust. He smells Diana's perfume and finds himself hoisted into the back seat. Bruce belts him in.

His temples throb with every beat of his heart and his stomach roils and cramps by turn. He's treated to the rare and unpleasant sensation of sweat trickling down his back. The car isn't moving for long before he lurches, fighting against the resistance of the seatbelt, hands coming to his mouth. This feeling, it's as alien as anything else. He needs to get up, needs to—

"Pull over," Bruce says, urgent. He leans to crack the door open and reels the belt out so Clark can lean and cough and purge into the gutter. The night air is cold and clammy on his face. His throat feels full of hot gravel and Bruce's hand burns on the back of his neck. The coughing makes his head scream with pain, like it's going to split open, so he clutches with both hands to make sure it can't.

He makes a helpless fear-sound and his vision greys around the edges. Bruce hauls him back in and the blood rush sends him spinning back into nothing.

*

Clark gains a little clarity as they get back to the hotel—enough to stagger out of the car himself, thought he needs help making it through the foyer. The concierge barely looks up from his crossword; even the most prestigious hotel in the city is not spared the occasional drunkard. 

"Elevators are just a little further," Bruce murmurs in his ear. His arm is braced across Clark's back, his hand bunching the suit jacket into uncomfortable dimensions as he hauls him along. Clark clings to him similarly and tries not to throw up on the polished floor. "Alfred, Diana, any luck?" 

"I've located Ms. Waller's hotel but she's already checked out," Alfred replies over the earpiece. "Dr. Moone also."

"Do we know who the soldier was?"

"Afraid not, sir."

"Hm. She said something about a brother."

"The other figurine," Diana says. "It was still intact. She may have been seeking a host for him."

Against his side, Clark feels Bruce takes a deep breath and let it out again. Clark knows what he's thinking. The idea terrifies him, too. 

The elevator dings and Bruce gets them on board, and Clark is pathetically glad that it's a veneer interior, no mirrors. He feels muddy, like he's just crawled out of his grave. He doesn't want to see that. Bruce hits a button and the movement of the car sends fresh runnels of nausea through him. He thinks maybe being on the floor would help, but when he tries to crouch down Bruce hefts him back up again with a gruff 'hey, hey'. 

The elevator lurches to a stop and a couple gets on. He feels Bruce tense up, his grip tightening incrementally.

"Is he alright?" The woman asks. Clark knows she must mean him, even though she's eyeing Bruce's disarrayed hair and his spackled suit. The pitch of her voice sends fresh pain lancing through his skull, regardless. 

"Too many appletinis," Bruce says airily, laughing as though he's had one too many himself. One hand is firm around Clark's waist, the other splayed over his chest. Clark swallows and swallows, a spindle of saliva escaping down his chin despite his best efforts. "I'm taking him to bed. Oops, watch your shoes."

She makes a dismayed noise, and her partner mashes the button for the next floor. The elevator pings and they disembark with casual haste. Bruce lets out an audible breath on their heels.

"How are you holding up?" he asks as the doors clang shut behind them.

Clark's throat feels raw, but swallowing keeps the queasiness manageable. His limbs are an uncoordinated mess. "Feel sick," he says. Speaking feels as mushy as it sounds.

"Yeah," Bruce says. "Probably all that champagne."

Clark wavers between indignation and a resigned sort of betrayal. Bruce had kryptonite on him, and by his own admission, he must take it with him everywhere. He settles on indignant and is about to try and pick a fight but the elevator slides to a halt at the penthouse floor.

"Almost there," he hears Bruce say, over the arrhythmic pound of his heart. "Not far now."

Bruce brings them to a halt in front of the room he's staying in, then abruptly swings him around and marches him to Bruce's own door instead. Clark makes a rough sound in his throat and stumbles in an attempt to coordinate his feet. He wonders why Bruce doesn't just pick him up, sling him over his shoulder, like—like—

"Look at you," Bruce mutters. "I'm getting too old for this." He keeps Clark upright by pinning him against the wall with one hand on his shoulder. He slides the other inside his jacket and pulls out his hotelroom keycard.

"My room?" Clark mumbles.

"Faces west," Bruce says. "My room."

Bruce leaves him propped in the bathroom doorway. Clark presses his fingers into the frame, enduring wave after wave of cold shivers. He focuses on the shifting patterns in the mosaic tiling until he can't anymore. Bruce is… rearranging the room? Clark may not be firing on all cylinders, but he's pretty sure this isn't something that can be feng shui'd away. 

The screech of furniture legs dragged across the floor vibrates through him on a tender, queasy level and he clutches at the doorframe to propel himself into the bathroom. He slumps over the bathtub and dark muck gushes out of him, oozing under his tongue and between his teeth, damming up his nose. It makes him want to throw up all over again. 

"Jesus," he hears Bruce say from the bathroom doorway. His arm comes around Clark's chest and he rests his other hand at Clark's jaw, keeping his chin tipped as he heaves and coughs. Some of it spatters Bruce's shirt cuff. Clark has no doubt that the next time he sees it, it'll be under an electron microscope in the cave's laboratory. 

Clark spits into the tub. It's like the stuff has sloughed right out of his brain—he feels a lot more lucid even if everything keeps spinning off to the side. His nose and eyes are watering.

"Done?" Bruce asks him. The hand that was on his neck is now over his forehead, stroking his hair back. Checking his temperature, Clark thinks at first, except Bruce can't have a baseline for that. 

"Think so," Clark says thickly. He wipes at his face with the back of his hand. "Sorry." 

Bruce says nothing, but Clark feels the huff of his breath on the nape of his neck when he leans over to twist on the faucet, chest pressing warm against Clark's back. Clark's blood rushes and he feels light-headed again, enough to tighten his grip on the edge of the tub.

"What happened tonight, Kal?" 

There's an edge of interrogation to Bruce's voice that makes Clark tense up. He remembers Bruce's hands on him like it's a real memory, knows already he will not be able to forget it and that it'll resurge with every touch, whether careless or deliberate or necessary. The upswell of longing tugs at him even now, as wretched at he is. 

He wants to lean back and rest his head on Bruce's shoulder. He could do that, and they could both pretend it's because he's sick, but he's determined to see this night through with at least a scrap of dignity intact.

"I don't know," he replies. "Whatever it was, it—she tore right through me."

He squeezes his eyes closed for a moment and takes a calming breath, trying to cage the memory of the Enchantress slithering into his mind. He wants to put it in the same place he keeps the noise a man in a tornado makes, alongside the sensation of vertebrae separating under his hands, how it feels to bleed, what coffin silk smells like. 

This doesn't work all of the time—putting things in boxes is easy, it's getting them to stay there that's the trick—but it's still light years better than having them pinging around in his head like free radicals.

(He wonders how many more of these incidents he'll collect before he's dead. If he can die. Maybe he's fated for madness instead.

He gives that thought a firm shove into the back with the others.)

There's been a long silence while he frantically rallies, just the patter of water filling the space, not unlike the cave's wet acoustics. Bruce has been turning things over in his head too, no doubt, extrapolating all the ways this new vulnerability could be used against him, parsing out the worst-case scenarios and—

—except he's already done that, hasn't he? Because this _was_ a worst-case scenario, and he _was_ prepared. That's why he had the kryptonite in the first place. His vorpal sword, always at hand.

Clark closes his eyes and takes as deep a breath as he can manage.

"How did you stop her?" he asks.

"I didn't." Bruce said. "Waller did. Cut her strings. And how she did that is something I need to know." 

So. The Enchantress can control Clark, and Waller controls the Enchantress. That's not a hierarchy Bruce will ever countenance. There's only one person he trusts to hold the Superman's leash.

Bruce shifts, hooks a hand under Clark's arm. "Think you can stand?" 

"Maybe." Clark leans on Bruce—more than he wants to and not nearly as much as he wants to—and tries to stagger onto his feet, but his legs are still boneless. "Ah, nope." He slides back down before he ends up in uncontrolled collapse, palms flat to the floor and shoulders against the vanity. Part of him really wants to laugh, but tonight has done a number on him, and it's sobering that no small part of that was Bruce's doing.

Bruce, who has knelt to administer a tumbler of water to him with care, tipping his head back with fingers on his chin. Clark swallows obediently, though his throat is tight. How would this night have gone, in more forgiving circumstances? They would have kissed, Clark knows that with certainty. He'd have made a move even if Bruce hadn't. Maybe they would have come back here after the museum, Bruce pretending to be drunk, building in that distance even as he used it as an excuse to reel Clark in. A carefully structured seduction that Clark would see right through and allow anyway. Maybe they would have fucked with the kryptonite right there in his pocket, Clark urging him on, none the wiser. 

And because things weren't complicated enough, Clark feels himself get halfway hard at the thought. 

Before he can lament his proclivities, he's being pulled up onto his feet again, Bruce's shoulder wedged under his arm as he guides him toward the bed. It's been pushed over to the plate-glass windows that stretch from floor to ceiling. Midway is a rigorous diamond-point grid of lights laid out beneath them. Its skyline, regular and neat, holds no surprises, but no familiarity either. As Bruce wrestles his suit jacket and shirt off, Clark finds himself wishing that they were doing this at home, even though he can't quite figure out where that is. 

The farm, in the sweet scent of hay. The cool depths of the cave. The pristine lakehouse bedroom. His apartment doesn't factor in.

He offers only token resistance when Bruce starts on the shirt. When it comes to the slacks he shies, heart pounding hard as he tries to hold Bruce an arms-length away, aware that rest of him's hard, too, but Bruce simply persists. If he notices he doesn't mention it. 

Divested, Clark folds himself onto the cool sheets in just his underwear. When he tries to pull the blankets over, half to cover his bareness, half to protect himself from the laser-focus of Bruce's attention, Bruce pulls them right back.

"No," he says. 

He makes an art out of being unavoidable as much as he does at being elusive, leaning over Clark with arms braced. He's trying to be intimidating, but Clark would only have to reach up and tug his shirt collar and maybe he'd come tumbling down onto him, finally.

Bruce stares down at him. "When that sun comes up, I want you soaking in the first goddamn ray over the horizon. The sun touches nothing until it touches you. Understood?"

"Understood," Clark says, keeping eye contact just because he thinks Bruce won't be expecting him to. 

The corners of Bruce's mouth draw tight. "You're angry," he says.

"More disappointed." Clark props one elbow to the mattress, lifts up to catch a hand in the lapel of Bruce's jacket. The shoulder seam is split. Clark wonders if he's got enough in him to tear it the rest of the way off. The suit is already ruined—he could tear the whole thing off. He's certain Bruce wouldn't complain for long. "You should have told me."

"Kal," Bruce says, a warning in his tone. He doesn't seem to understand that he's in no position for that. 

Clark wraps his fist more firmly into his jacket and pulls him down, making him plant a knee on the edge of the bed to keep his balance. He kisses the corner of Bruce's jaw. His stubble rasps against Clark's lips. "You should have _told_ me," he says in Bruce's ear, then presses in to kiss behind it. Clark can feel his pulse, beating wildly.

Bruce breathes and leans back. He rests one hand on Clark's shoulder while the other works at prying Clark's fingers from his jacket. "Listen," he says. "You were slammed pretty hard tonight. Your system's full of—"

"Champagne and magic sludge," Clark says. "And kryptonite. Trust me, the combination is not an aphrodisiac." After a moment of consideration, he adds, "I'm—a little drunk, I think, but I'm not out of my mind, Bruce."

Bruce opens his mouth, but Clark's not interested in any of the evasive maneuvers he's got lined up. He gives as little quarter as he can despite how much he's working to just keep himself propped up like this, inches from Bruce's face. For a moment Bruce seems as though he's going to lean in and actually meet Clark halfway for once, but he just inhales sharply through his nose. His hand brushes Clark's neck, his collarbone, and then he firmly presses Clark back down onto the bed.

It's not a precursor to joining him.

"Clark," Bruce says, and grimaces. " _Kal_. If you want a rebound fling, pretty much any other person on the planet would be more suitable."

"Really?" The rebuff is exactly as insulting as Bruce intends, but there's no accompanying condescension to his expression. He almost looks dismayed. Clark is unmoved. "And here I thought Bruce Wayne was notorious for—"

"Don't be obtuse."

"Obtuse," Clark says, blinking slowly. "God—Where do you get off, Bruce? Do you actually want me to be angry? Put me in your clothes, spend all night making passes at me and then feed me a line like that, sure. Suckerpunch me with some kryptonite and then wax poetic about laying me in the sun, okay. But you don't get to turn around and accuse _me_ of being obtuse."

The set of Bruce's mouth gets even grimmer; a muscle flexes in his cheek. He pushes himself up and away from the bed. "I need to get back to the museum. Secure the figurine."

"It'll be lousy with cops," Clark says. He feels clammy and drained and his patience for Bruce's diversionary tactics is at an all-time low.

Bruce looks at him narrowly. "It might be, or it is?" he asks.

Clark closes his eyes and consciously expands his hearing. All he can detect is the thunder of his own blood, lively in the grip of his temper and only heightened by Bruce's endlessly frustrating equivocation. "I don't know," he concedes. "But I _would_ know, if you—"

"If I hadn't—right." Bruce returns to his rhythmic jaw-clenching. "Maybe I should have told you," he says. It sounds like he's prying the words out from between his back teeth. "But what difference would it have made?"

Clark breathes out through his nose. God, give him patience with this man. "Effectively? None, except we wouldn't be having this conversation. I expected a little more trust, that's all."

Bruce hesitates. Only for a second, but it may as well be aeons. "I trust you," he says.

Clark stares at him, eyebrows raised. 

Bruce paces a tight circle, hand coming up to scrub the hair at the nape of his neck. "I trust you," he insists, advancing back to the bed. His eyes are bright, and he's absolute in his conviction. "It wasn't about that. It was about this exact scenario. It was about being able to neutralize you if _anyone else_ got to you."

"That's your excuse?"

"That's my reason."

"It really doesn't make it any better." 

"It does if you think about it," Bruce says. He manages to make it sound halfway reasonable for a moment, voice dropping to conversational tones. 

It makes Clark realize that they'd raised their voices at each other. God damn him. Clark tries to summon an appropriately bitter laugh but it quickly devolves into a coughing fit. He groans and presses his forearm over his face. "You know," he says, "nobody's ever hurt me quite the way you do, Bruce." 

He'd never have thought himself capable of such melodrama. These are the precipices Bruce drives him over.

Still—it doesn't knock the fight out of Bruce so much as stop him in his tracks. He sheds his defensiveness in discrete stages; shoulders dropping, his fists uncurling, and finally he comes to sit on the bed. Clark figures there's not going to be any apology forthcoming, but he's an estimated thirty percent more contrite, at least.

They abide in silence for a while, Clark trying not to rasp as he inhales, skimming the border of sleep until he feels the light touch of fingers on his wrist, resting over his pulse. He doesn't respond, indulging in the delicate contact, but it's not long until Bruce's fingers coast down his arm and then retreat. He lets his arm drop away from his face. Bruce is looking at him, intent.

"What did she show you?" he asks.

Clark takes a deep breath. He doesn't want to lie, not if he's just been giving Bruce a hard time over the merits of trust, but—

"Home," he says.

Bruce's expression gives nothing away, and that tells Clark plenty. 

"Ma. Pa. The farm," he clarifies. And the rest, he supposes. "You were there, too. It was strange, since you've never been there. I don't know—" 

He lets his confusion lapse him into silence. He can feel the heat crawling up his face. Bruce just nods, as though this conversation is progressing in a perfectly ordinary fashion. 

"She showed me my parents," Bruce says, uninflected. "Brought us all together again, alive and well. Happy."

"God." Clark feels the gut-punch of that in the specter of his father. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Not the first time, won't be the last. It's how I knew immediately. My entire life is predicated on—" He closes his eyes briefly. "It's… a fundamentally incompatible scenario. But these mind-fuckers, they're predictable. They like to dig around for your weak spots. The things you long for, deep down."

There's not much for Clark to say to that. He's not so much tipped his hand as laid his cards out on the table, but he doubts it's much of a surprise to Bruce at this point. Clark casts some sobering predictions on how this is going to play out.

Bruce's face relaxes into a helpless, open warmth. "It was lucky," he says. "There's a chance it would have taken me longer to shake off, if—" He passes a hand through his hair; he's projecting something almost like relief. "So that's how I knew. What clued you in?"

Clark hauls himself to sit upright while he tries to put his finger on it. "I don't think I've known you long enough, or know you well enough, maybe, for her to stitch together something convincing," he says. He picks his next words carefully. "It was... idealized. It wasn't how you are."

"And how am I?" Bruce says.

"Not too good to be true, I guess."

Bruce glances at him sidelong. "I'm not sure if that was an insult or a compliment."

"Me neither," Clark says. "Both?"

Bruce turns, one leg bent up on the bed. His knee presses against Clark's hip, soft wool and warmth. "And how was it you wanted me to be?" he prompts with nonchalance that is just as impenetrable as his usual disposition. 

"I don't see how that's important," Clark says. "You are how you are."

Bruce looks at him for a long moment. Weighing, maybe. Running through some intricate emotional risk assessment. Clark has felt the shudder of his breath on his lips. He wonders how that will factor in.

"Professional curiosity," Bruce says.

Clark shakes his head. "For god's sake, Bruce."

"Okay," Bruce says. "Personal curiosity. You look like hell. You should get some sleep."

"I don't want to sleep just yet. Kinda anticipating the nightmares," he says. "Besides—" 

"Besides what?"

"Don't you think we need to talk?"

Bruce's eyebrows lift, gently patronizing. "We are talking."

" _Bruce_."

There's about as much give in him as a granite slab. It's as though Clark hasn't all but said out loud that he's utterly gone on him. 

And as though Clark needs to be privy to Bruce's physiological reponses to know what's going on with him. He might not be experiencing the same intensity of feeling, but he's certain that Bruce is more than peripherally attracted. His hedging sells him out, if nothing else.

"Kal," Bruce says. "What are you expecting from this conversation?"

Case in point. He is the singularly most frustrating person Clark has ever met. He sighs in defeat. "Pretty much this, I guess."

Bruce pats him on the shoulder and gets to his feet. He shrugs off his jacket and examines the damage blankly, then makes a cursory attempt to brush off the worst of the plaster dust. In the end he slings it over the foot of the bed and turns his back. "We have more important things to worry about."

He's going to leave. Unbelievable. "Where are you going?" Clark asks.

Bruce pauses, the heel of his hand depressing the door handle. "Midnight stroll." 

Clark swings his legs off the edge of the bed. His slacks are just out of reach; when he stretches to grab them his vision grays out around the edges. "I'm coming to the museum with you," he says anyway. Maybe some fresh air will help.

"No. You're not." 

Bruce paces over and tries to confiscate Clark's pants. Clark levels a suitably incredulous look at him, hand fisted in the material. He's certain it's going to turn into an undignified tug-of-war, but Bruce just covers his hand with his own, a firm request for him to stop. 

"Clark," he says.

Damn him.

**


	7. Chapter 7

It's only when the cool relief of the city's night air hits him that Bruce lets himself breathe the way he needs to, safe in the knowledge that Clark won't be able to hear him. Everything he's kept an increasingly tenuous grip on—everything he couldn't let himself contemplate in Clark's presence—comes rushing in on him full-force. 

He can't even separate the exhilaration from the adoration from the dread. It all crushes him the same way.

A surly distance didn't help. A literal distance didn't help. Cool professionalism didn't help. Intrusive boundary-pushing didn't help. Artificial, and not so artificial flirtatiousness, unsurprisingly, didn't help.

Seeing Clark under threat and bowing to a will that was not his own—categorically did not help. 

That must not happen again.

His mind keeps straying to the moment Clark had been ensnared in the Enchantress' thrall. She had drawn him into her arms and Bruce had known the danger immediately, a gut instinct that has served him well a hundred times over, but there was no accounting for the fury that had bubbled in his veins as she breathed her magic into him. 

He could laugh, to have gone from having such a hard-on for killing the guy to simply having a hard-on for him. His wires aren't so much crossed as snarled up into a Gordian knot. And Clark—he has been direct and unambiguous. He knows all the sides to him, has endured him at his various absolute worsts, and has still come out of it wanting him. There's an Alexandrian solution to this.

Bruce takes another, calmer breath and wonders if he's done trying to fuck everything irreparably, even after being forgiven more than any one man deserves. Still plenty of opportunity, even if he manages to subvert his trajectory so far. If he can't uncouple Waller from his business, things are going to get messy.

The museum is a dozen city blocks west. Bruce loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves as he walks, just another harried businessman blowing off some steam. The bland modern storefronts and bars on the main street lack Metropolis' bright deco charm or Gotham's cathedralesque mystique, but Midway evidently appeals to somebody. People live here, after all. 

"Alfred," he says, activating his commlink. He hears a quick intake of breath. Clark on the line still. Bruce's hindbrain clamors in delight and he gives serious consideration to punching himself in the face. Whatever he does or does not do, he's going to have to come to terms with the fact that Clark is not a problem that's going to go away.

"Sir?" Alfred says, over the buzz of ambient chatter and what sounds like country music.

Bruce slows his walk. "What's your position?"

"West Tenth Street, Harry's Bar and Grill, opposite the museum." Diana chiming in. She lowers her voice. "It's a steak out."

"Diana," Alfred says reprovingly.

"Enjoying your evening, I trust," Bruce says.

"Hardly," Alfred says, as disgruntled as Bruce has ever heard him. "It's an absolutely appalling establishment."

"The regulars made fun of his bow-tie so he hustled them at the pool table," Diana says.

Bruce rubs at one eye. "Great. What's the outlook?"

"Quiet," Alfred says. "Suspiciously so, as though—" There's the tinkle of breaking glassware in the background, cheers and raucous laughter, including Diana's. Alfred sighs. "A handful of squad cars, but otherwise it's as though nothing has happened."

"Why aren't there cops everywhere?" Clark says. He sounds exhausted. "They can't be trying to cover this up."

"They are," Bruce says. 

"How would they? It was huge. There were a lot of guests, a lot of witnesses."

"You're the investigative journalist. How does it usually go down?"

There's a long, strained silence. Bruce weathers it with as little self-recrimination as he can manage. 

Eventually Clark blows static and says, "What are we dealing with here, Bruce?"

"ARGUS," Bruce says.

"The hundred-eyed giant?" Clark says, after a moment of almost tangible confusion. "It's great that you've decided to embrace the mythological after all, but that's a little out there."

"A Homeland Security sub-branch," Alfred interjects, before Bruce can calibrate just the right degree of bite to his response. "They like to keep tabs on metahumans."

"I thought she was a goddess."

"Metahuman is a valid descriptor," Bruce says.

"She is both," Diana says. "For a given definition of either. Her origin doesn't put her beyond the attention of those who would seek to control her, and she's weak enough that they have succeeded." She pauses. "Mostly."

If tonight's display is what the entity is capable of while weakened, then it's all the more important that she is corralled by someone with more scruples than Waller. Bruce grits his teeth. He doesn't have the resources to wrangle more than one goddess at a time. Diana has a prior relationship with Moone, and knowledge of the creature she contains. She is the most qualified to take the Enchantress in hand, but experience suggests it would be a considerable burden. 

As loath as he is to admit it, the optimal scenario is Waller being transparent about her intentions, letting him mine for as much information as he can in preparation for when ARGUS inevitably drop the ball again. He's not going to hold his breath. Further, he doesn't believe for a moment that she hasn't noticed the company he's chosen to keep. This is probably going involve some kind of mutual extortion.

"I'm going to take a look around," Bruce says. 

"Sir—if you happen across a pair of Louboutins, would you fetch them?"

"Oh," Diana says. "Hmm. If it's not too much trouble."

Bruce arrives at the museum, its columns and pediment warmly uplit in contrast to the cool blue of the evening sky. It's as Alfred reported: there are two cars out front, two more at the end of the block. There's no tape up, no barricades. He can stroll past uninhibited as he checks the news feed on his phone. Reports of an earthquake in Midway City—a three-point-one, negligible property damage, a handful of minor casualties. It'll register in the public consciousness and then be pushed off the page by mid-morning.

He glances up as he tucks his phone away, leisurely turning down the side of the building away from the long stretch of the streetlights.

There are a number of windows on the ground floor, all of them too small to fit a grown man, especially one with shoulders like his. Second floor is more promising. Bruce takes a few steps back and gathers himself for a running leap at the masonry. His fingers find purchase in the concave mortar jointing; the brickwork is modern but styled to look a century old, an ostentatious sandstone facade with inset detailing. Easy to climb.

He swings himself up onto the first-story ledge and taps at his watch. It beeps, and his phone vibrates, flashing up a reconnaissance of the electronics in his surroundings. The window is alarmed. He deactivates it with a scrambler, then flicks a batarang out of his pocket and jimmies the window open. 

Bruce climbs inside and finds himself on a mezzanine looking over the foyer. From here he has a sweeping vantage of the night's destruction—or, would have, if there were any. There's an unmarked cleanup crew attending the occasional shattered display case but the museum itself is largely undamaged. No peaked concrete where the Enchantress stood, no sooty crater, no architecture melted inward. The extent of her reality-warping abilities is formidable. 

He stops briefly to shake off a recent memory: the manor's polished wood; the scent of his mother's perfume.

He sidles away from the balustrade and towards the stairs to the ground floor. He can do this backwards and with his eyes closed—down into the vault, lift the second figurine, out again without any of the crew noticing him, easy—but as he passes through the shadow of a column he hears the unmistakable noise of a round being chambered.

He exhales hard and raises his hands, slowly puts them behind his head.

"Bruce?" Clark says in his ear. Bruce squeezes his eyes shut briefly. Not now, Clark.

"Turn around," the man behind him says. "Slowly."

Bruce obeys, slotting a sheepish smile into place as he does. "Good evening, officer," he says.

"Mr. Wayne." It's Moone's companion. Military, if Bruce was in any doubt, and not Salvation Army despite his second-hand suit. Narrowed eyes, finger light on the trigger. Not nervous enough, more baffled to find a civilian here. Waller has been discreet in her debriefing. "What are you doing here?"

"B," Clark says again. "What's going on?"

"I'm looking for some shoes," Bruce says.

"Waller," the man says into his walkie, eyes and gun unwavering. "I've got Bruce Wayne here."

"What a surprise. Bring him to me, Flag."

The man—Flag—gestures with the muzzle of his pistol. Bruce patiently endures a less than thorough one-handed pat-down, then lets himself be marched onto the museum floor. 

"Say the word," Diana murmurs in his ear.

"I'm fine," Bruce says under his breath. "Got it under control."

"Right," Clark says.

Waller has set herself up on one of the museum's conference rooms: stark off-white walls and a projector, whiteboard, office-issue padded chairs. She sits at the head of a series of tables that have been shunted together. Flag prods Bruce between the shoulder blades with his firearm until he takes a seat at the foot.

There's a security case on the table in front of her. To her left sits a wan young woman in a black dress—what used to be a black dress—and Waller's suit jacket draped over her shoulders. She lifts her head, and a ripple of something passes over her face when she sees—not him, but Flag.

"That will be all," Waller says. The woman looks as though she might shatter like glass. Flag wavers. "You're dismissed, Flag."

"Director Waller," Bruce says pleasantly. "Dr. Moone." 

Moone gives him a long, blank look, then retrains her thousand-yard stare somewhere over his left shoulder. Her body language in the foyer earlier this evening had been anxious and stilted. Now she appears nothing but numb.

"You seem to be turning up in a lot of places where you shouldn't this evening, Mr. Wayne."

"Well, you know how it is," Bruce says, lounging back in his chair. His instinct is to make himself seem distractible and bored, inclined to write the situation off as folly. It's not going wash with Waller, even for a second. "Say 'keep out', that's just like a big red button with 'do not push' on it. I gotta."

"Well, I hope your curiosity has been sated."

"And then some." He winks at Moone. She continues to ignore him. "We all have our little foibles." 

Someone snorts over the comm.

Waller purses her lips, and then yanks the rug out from under their charade. "What's your game here?" she says bluntly. Her hands clasp and come to rest on the tabletop.

"Oh, this is not a game." Bruce leans forward and drops his act like it's a murder weapon. "If this gets out, whatever you're cooking up is dead in the water. Let's talk damage control."

"I assure you, I don't need your help with that. I'm sure you've already seen the news. It was a naturally occurring phenomenon."

"I don't think you can pass this off as an earthquake, Director."

"You're right." Waller sits back in her chair. "But further investigation will show that the guests found their evening somewhat augmented. Tomorrow's news will involve an entertaining 'and finally' about cow bream canapes and a remarkable collective hallucination. A few of them may need therapy, but why let that get in the way of a good story."

Presumably the ones who had their heads turned inside-out. Bruce is slightly impressed and slightly appalled. "That's audacious." 

"You don't get anywhere without taking a few risks, Mr. Wayne. My copy-book is not as blotted as you might think."

"And Dr. Moone?" Bruce again tries to get some acknowledgement from the woman—she's almost looking at him, but her eyes are unfocused, her attention somewhere far away. He wonders if there is a voice in her head, whispering. 

"Is not your concern."

"She became my concern the moment she attacked the museum and its guests. If my friends and I hadn't—" 

"Ah, yes," Waller says. "About your friends."

Bruce swears inwardly. "They're to be kept out of your business."

Waller's lips part in a brief flash of teeth. "Oh, but it's not that easy. I'm currently heading a somewhat sensitive project, Mr. Wayne. Do you know what it is?"

"Despite what you might think, I have better things to do with my time than track your every move." 

"You used to, anyway," Waller says with no small amusement. "I'm assembling a team. A task force. I trust you understand why I'm doing this."

Bruce has enough self-awareness to recognize that they are similar, when held in a certain light. "Arrogance and control issues," he says.

Waller ignores that. "It's something I started putting together after the death of the Superman. They're a contingency plan, you could say. A failsafe. The world is on the brink of a new age, hurtling toward a post-human future, but not one we engendered ourselves. I'm sure you feel it as keenly as I do—the marvel of it. The threat of it."

If Waller was hoping for some kind of visceral reaction from him, she's out of luck. The post-human future has been crashing at his place for some time now.

"Of course, they tried to shut me down when Superman rose again. Considered my task force surplus to requirements. But the truth is, his return has only cemented the need we have for such a team. A metahuman that powerful needs checks and balances."

That was more on-target. Bruce takes a breath and masters a sudden spike of anger. "You don't have that authority," he says evenly.

"Neither do you." Waller's eyes flash. Bruce recognizes that look all too well. He is acutely familiar with the righteousness that fuels it. "We saw tonight how he can be manipulated. How he can be leveraged against his own side. Perhaps you've already forgotten how dangerous he can be."

"I haven't forgotten anything," Bruce says. "And I haven't forgotten that it was you pulling the strings. He's not one of your assets to be handled, Waller."

"No," Waller says. "He's worse than that. He is the cleanest WMD the world has ever seen. Tell me why I should leave him solely in the hands of someone like you."

"He is not a _weapon_ ," Bruce says. He flicks a glance towards Moone. She's drawn up into herself as their conversation has escalated, pulling the jacket tight over her narrow shoulders. Bruce clenches his teeth. "He is a—"

"—he's what, Mr. Wayne?"

Clark is a lot of things.

"He is human," Bruce says. "In all the ways that count."

"Thank you." Waller draws herself up straight. "That's exactly what I was afraid of."

Bruce's patience with the conversation hits a wall, so to speak. He didn't come here to discuss Clark. "I want your files," he says. "I want your dossiers. I want all the information on your metahumans."

"That's need-to-know."

"And I need to know. This involves me directly."

"Mr. Wayne, I don't think you understand your position here. I don't owe you shit." She looks at him like she'd combust him on the spot and not give it a second though. 

"I've already seen more than enough to demolish you and your project," he says. 

"And who's going to believe anything, coming from a washed-up souse like you?"

Bruce lets a smile curl on his lips. "Get your digs in while you can," he says. "The right word in the wrong ear and you're done."

"No doubt." Waller says, without missing a beat. "Don't imagine for a second I won't take you down with me. Impasse?"

Bruce inhales, not quite deep enough to become a sigh. Waller is gunmetal cold; her threat of a mutually assured destruction is not an idle one. Acquiring the information she has is not worth the collateral damage.

"Impasse," Bruce says. "For now." He stands to leave, but somewhere between getting to his feet and fastening his suit button he decides he is not going to leave empty-handed.

"The other vessel."

"It's on its way to a highly secure, highly classified location as we speak."

"Forgive me if I'm not completely convinced."

"You don't have to be." 

"I want your word that you won't bring that thing anywhere near Superman."

"I'm not an idiot, Wayne. There's only going to be a problem if you fail to keep him away from _it_." 

She's checking her phone, not even looking at him at this point. A summary dismissal if Bruce has ever experienced one. It's uniquely infuriating; he feels a brief flicker of empathy for anyone who's dealt with it from him.

Still, he has one last trick up his sleeve. The Wall might be impenetrable, but Moone—she's tender.

"June?" he says, gently. "I'd like to ask you something."

She blinks and screws up her face. Her mouth stretches into a grimace for an instant and then her expression relaxes all at once, like ice sliding down a mountain. "Yes?" she says hollowly.

"No," Waller says, looking up sharply. "You talk to me."

"Seems rude, with her sitting right there."

"You talk to me," Waller says again. 

Bruce smiles, spreads his hands. "I thought that we'd hit a deadlock. I want to know more about the Ench—"

Moone's chair shrieks against the floor as she bolts to her feet. She's like a snared creature, struggling against the bounds of her own body, her eyes glassy with dread. Waller takes her wrist and hushes her until she sits down again. She is not incapable of dispensing small kindnesses, despite her reputation.

"What do I have to do to get you off my back?" Waller looks only a hair less than composed, but it's more weakness than she's shown all night.

Bruce raises his eyebrows. "I just want a few answers."

"Fine. You ask me one question, you get one answer, and if you darken my door again I'll throw you ass-first into Belle Reve with the rest of the kooks."

"Deal," Bruce says. "How do you control her?"

"Hmph." 

Waller rests her hand on top of the security case. She doesn't answer right away, and as the silence folds in on itself Bruce wonders if she's going to answer at all, or whether it's going to be a case of weathering any number of uniquely harrowing experiences before she'll admit she doesn't have this completely handled—but eventually she takes her hand off the case, drums her fingertips on it quick and sharp like gunfire.

"The same way you control the Superman," she says

*

"That sounded like it went well," Clark says in his ear. He is very deliberately not asking about Waller's cryptic response, and even a dozen blocks away with only his breathing to read him on, Bruce can tell how much he wants to.

Waller showed him what was in the case, and though she declined to demonstrate, Bruce got the general idea. He thinks about the kryptonite spear locked under lead in his armory, and then of Clark in his bed, and wonders if she realized all of what she was implying.

The night has cooled significantly; he shivers on the museum steps. "I thought you'd be passed out by now."

"Any moment." There's a pause as Clark yawns widely, as though he needs to demonstrate. "Just thought I'd listen to you give someone else a hard time for a change. Watch out, I picked up some tips."

"That wasn't for your benefit." 

"It was substantially for my benefit."

Bruce makes an ambivalent noise.

"Waller has some strange ideas about the nature of our relationship," Clark says, after a while.

"Agreed."

There's another, shorter pause. Clark takes a quick breath and Bruce is horribly certain he's about to make a joke about Bruce handling him, but he only asks, "Are you on your way back?" 

Bruce rubs his forehead and misses the toughness of kevlar and leather. "Soon." 

He sets off away from the museum but away from the hotel, too. He's entitled to some time to decompress between crises. If he's lucky, by the time he gets back, Clark will be asleep. 

*

Bruce flattens his hand to the hotel door, then lets himself in as quietly as the lock will allow. His comm is still tapped to Clark's private line. He faded quickly once Bruce stopped feeding him attention, and his relaxed breathing accompanied him through the streets and back to the hotel. 

It reminds him that it's been a while since he's grabbed more than a perfunctory nap. Days. His eyes feel sore.

He isn't certain what degree of his powers Clark is currently in command of, but he should be able to do this without waking him. It will be a useful exercise, even if the stakes are more personal than usual. One foot across the threshold, he wonders if he will make it back to Clark's suite. Inside, with the door clicking softly closed behind him, he wonders how little of it will be Clark's fault if he doesn't.

Clark's jacket is by the bed in a crumpled, dusty heap, lying where Bruce pushed it from his shoulders. Clark himself lies facing away from Bruce, the deep curve of his waist and back limned by light pollution and the scarce moon. He's pulled the sheets over himself in direct contradiction to Bruce's instructions. Advancing slowly, Bruce keeps an eye on him, the slow rise and fall of his shoulder. He crouches, locates a pocket—no keycard for Clark's room in this one. He fumbles through the other pocket and then the inside one. Just as his finger catches the plastic edge sandwiched in a fold of lining, Clark sighs and rolls over.

Bruce freezes. Clark's eyes gleam in the half-light. He reaches out, slowly, and touches Bruce's hair with his fingertips. When Bruce doesn't push him away, it becomes an imposition of hands.

"Hey," he whispers. It strikes a chord in Bruce's chest, and with it comes the certainty that he'll not be leaving this room tonight.

He closes his eyes and resigns himself to this knowledge, slowly relaxing out of his crouch and going to his knees next to the bed. Clark slides his hand down Bruce's face until he's cupping his jaw, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. Bruce lets himself lean into it. 

His impulse is still to deflect, though he has already bound himself irrevocably to Clark whether he meant to or not. First as hunter to the hunted, and then as mourner to the mourned, the shape of his life allowing no room for him to be anything else. And what is he now? Witness to a miracle? Bruce has never believed in that kind of thing, but he can—he can believe in Clark, leaning half-out of a hotel room bed so that he can press his forehead to Bruce's. He's the light to Bruce's dark, maybe, but he's not inclined to romanticize it. 

Whatever their balance, he will fight bare-toothed and bloody-fisted for him, if it comes down to it. Knowing that, what's one more connection between them? 

Clark is warm under Bruce's hand. He touches the side of his neck, then skims over the broad span of one shoulder, and his breath grows heavier against Bruce's mouth. Bruce flattens his palm, pushing him back and up onto his knees, forcing a symmetry to their bodies as he finds his feet. 

This would be a good time to kiss him. Not perfect, with the night they've had, but he might spend the rest of his life waiting. He doubts there'll ever be a moment that could bestow him with enough grace.

Clark's nose brushes his. Bruce rests his fingertips in the dip of Clark's collarbone.

Bruce usually has some ulterior motive to this, some specific purpose. For cover, for a favor, for control. Rarely pleasure for pleasure's sake, despite how frequently it's offered him. Rarer still that he takes up on it and the aftermath doesn't leave him feeling strange. Here, it's something else entirely. He can't say that it doesn't unnerve him. His chest feels tight with it, like he can't quite breathe, even though he's breathing hard.

"I've been..." he says, and lets Clark fill in the blank. He will be more forgiving than Bruce ever could. 

"Yeah." Clark's smile is small and fond. "You have." He rubs his thumb under Bruce's lower lip, then tilts his head and kisses him sweetly. Unhurriedly. He tastes entirely of the hotel's complimentary mouthwash. 

In his liminal state of exhaustion, it strikes Bruce as completely absurd. He kisses Clark back in a bid to restrain his laughter, but ends up exhaling it loudly instead. It's a terrible response in every way, which just makes him want to laugh more. He leans into Clark, hands sweeping up his back, and hopes he recognizes the apology in it.

"You really know how to ruin a moment," Clark says, but he's grinning and pulling Bruce down onto the bed with him, and laughing when he says, "I'm not sure what I see in you."

"Boyish good looks and no credit limit." 

"Definitely your winning personality." Clark plucks at his shirt. "You know," he says, more seriously as he slips a button through its hole. "I was planning on tearing this off you tonight."

"Best laid plans," Bruce says. He sinks into the pillows, lets his eyes close. One hand rests over Clark's, tracking their descent toward the last few buttons of his shirt. In his mind's eye, he sees the fabric rip along the seams and the welt it might leave, and, despite his tiredness, his cock twitches in interest. "I'm not going to stop you."

"I thought I'd save it for when I can enjoy it properly. Pretty beat right now." Clark's forehead presses to the crook of Bruce's shoulder, hands sliding beneath his undershirt and rucking it up over his abdomen. His fingers trace the creases of Bruce's musculature and map out the topography of his physique, scars and all. 

Bruce says nothing. He could drift off like this, with Clark's hands radiating heat over his skin, his breath against his neck, the resonant beat of his heart. Bruce Wayne sleeps with people, but he rarely _sleeps_ with people. There's vulnerability in that.

He shrugs out of his shirtsleeves. Clark pushes the rest of his undershirt up off over his head and his slacks down his legs, to be lost under the bedding. 

Clark tucks an arm over him and lets out a long sigh. "You really made me work for this."

"Hope it was worth the effort."

"Let me double-check." Clark kisses him again. More insistently this time, his hand on Bruce's chin, opening his mouth to him. Bruce will no longer be able to brush his teeth in a hotel bathroom without getting half hard. 

"Verdict?" Bruce can't help chasing with a soft kiss of his own, as though some part of him still thinks Clark needs to be swayed.

Clark smiles at him. He looks drawn even in the diffuse light from the city below, shadows settling in his features deeper than they should. "You broadcast a lot of hostility for someone who kisses like that."

"The world is full of contradictions."

"Well, Mr. Contrary, thanks for not laughing in my face this time."

"You're welcome, though I can't promise it won't happen again."

"That's reassuring," Clark says—and he actually does sound reassured. On consideration, maybe he was worried that this might be a one-time deal, a very specific confluence of events that's landed him in Bruce's bed, with little hope of an encore. The way Bruce has been jerking him around, it's not that great a surprise. 

Which is why Bruce goes and kisses him again, burying a hand in his hair, asking for him to be still so he can take his time. It's an attempt to cut a path through this tangle and communicate his intentions clearly. He can feel Clark firming against him in response, and if he were a younger man, he would maybe see about getting himself most of the way there, too. Climb over him and rub against his thighs, leaving nothing to doubt. But he's not, and even if he were, Clark is demonstrably wrecked without requiring any further input from him.

In the morning, Bruce thinks. 

"We should talk," he says. "In the morning." When he's strong again and can pin Bruce to the mattress one-handed when he inevitably gets sick of listening to him.

"We're talking now, aren't we?" Clark says. 

Bruce doesn't have the energy to pretend to find him insufferable.

"Not about this. This is self-evident." One of Clark's hands has spread over his hip, fingertips tracing the crease of muscle through his underwear. He follows it to its terminus, dangerously close to the base of Bruce's cock. He draws in a breath. "About you. About this weak spot you have, and what we're going to do about it. I thought you were tired."

"I am," Clark says. "I just want to touch you. Anyway, I have a plan."

Clark's hand moves almost incidentally over his cock, then settles more boldly on his inner thigh. He strokes his way down to Bruce's knee then back again, pressing his fingers into the muscle. 

"What's your plan?"

"The kryptonite," Clark says, mouthing at Bruce's jaw. "You're going to give it to me."

It barely constitutes an idea, never mind a plan. Definitely manipulative, with his hands where they are. Bruce doesn't believe that Clark thinks he'd fall for it.

"You seem very certain of yourself." He grips Clark's wrist and turns, putting his back to him and pulling his arm over him in the same instance; too intimate to be a mixed message. "I'm going to need more details before I agree to anything."

"Hmm." Clark noses at the back of his neck. "No. Time to put your money where your mouth is."

There can be no plan. He knows what Clark wants to hear: those three little words again. In other circumstances, Bruce would sooner have professed undying devotion. He doubts Clark realizes what he's already gotten out of him. Thrice in one evening is definitely too much. He considers affecting something long-suffering, to more easily handle the truth of it. Or, he could say something else entirely, but to the same effect. He weighs up his options while Clark's breath warms his shoulder. 

Whatever you say. If that's what you want. As you wish. Don't make me regret this, Clark.

Or, he could say nothing. He could just give him the kryptonite.

In the midst of his indecision, Bruce falls asleep.

*

He comes awake swiftly on the tail end of a lightless dream. He's immediately aware that he's not alone, and he rides out a familiar, dismal moment before he catches up. It's Clark who is here, sitting on the edge of the bed with the broad expanse of his back to him.

And he's watching Bruce over his shoulder with a strange mix of doubt and apprehension. If he's having second thoughts already, then Bruce will signpost the way out. He doesn't have the forbearance to negotiate, if it's going to be the case—the sooner he rips off the bandaid, the sooner he can get to licking his wounds.

That had been the plan to begin with, after all. He scowls. "What." 

Instead of precipitating an argument, Clark's cloudy expression clears, a grin breaking over his face. "Nothing," he says warmly. His gaze flicks to the massive window and the powder-blue sky that's shedding the last of the sunrise. "It's gonna be a beautiful day."

"Oh, god. You're a morning person," Bruce says, turning his face into the pillow. His heart pounds on an crest of adrenaline; usually a bullet past his ear is the cause, or a knife glancing off his armor. "Of course you're a morning person. What time is it?"

"Coming up to six-thirty."

Bruce groans. "Wake me in another fifteen. And if you could be a little less effervescent, that would be ideal."

"Less pep first thing, gotcha," Clark says. "Your heart is racing."

So, he's back on form, and already feels comfortable enough to pry into Bruce's autonomic reflexes. Bruce takes a deep breath and employs one of a number of meditative techniques that would be suitable at this juncture. His heartrate slows dramatically. 

"I'm fine," he says.

"Neat trick. How long can you keep it up?" 

Clark rolls back into bed and then up against Bruce. His hand takes a leisurely stroll over Bruce's ass and down the back of his thigh, then hitches Bruce's leg over his hip, fingers curling into the back of his knee. He's fever-hot and rubbing slowly up against Bruce's erection—which, after a decent night's sleep, has finally gotten with the program.

Bruce's pulse rockets back up to critical. Clark grins and turns him onto his back with one hand, which does nothing to help his situation. He slides a finger into the waistband of Bruce's boxer briefs. 

"Are you particularly attached to these?"

"Only in the sense that I'm wearing them."

"Good." Clark takes the waistband between finger and thumb and rips it like it's no more more substantial than rice paper. Carefully at first and then more eagerly, the material discarded and curling up on the sheets in useless scraps.

Bruce is as disconcerted by the casual display of strength as he's fired up by it. The delicate way Clark began and how quickly his control lapsed underscores his lack of discipline, the recklessness that could endanger—

His thought process jumps off its tracks when Clark lifts himself so he can divest himself of his own underwear—and keeps lifting. He hangs suspended above Bruce, twisting out of his boxers with slow grace. 

Every hair on Bruce's body stands on end. For a moment he sees the untouchable god in him, feels the dark rush of fear lapping at the periphery of his emotions, but there's no longer any fury to catalyze it. Not when he's smiling down at Bruce so radiantly. Bruce raises a hand to his cheek, and Clark obediently drifts down over him, as light as thistledown, and settles between his legs.

He gradually sinks his full weight onto Bruce, as immovable as mountains. It pushes most of the air out of him but it's not that he's resisting when he digs his heels into the mattress and arches. It's that he knows the potential of him. It makes Bruce want to press against his unyielding body with all the zeal of a convert. 

Clark's response is a full-body tremor, then a scatter of kisses on Bruce's throat, his shoulders. His hands find their way into the crook of each of Bruce's elbows, spreading his arms next to his head, steel-band grip pinning him to the bed. Then, he pushes right back with a shallow roll of his hips, driving Bruce down again, against the mattress, sliding his cock over Bruce's in a slow, indulgent drag. Bruce cages his waist with his knees and grits his teeth. Things are escalating for him much more rapidly than he'd anticipated. 

"Clark." Bruce claws at his forearms uselessly, gets the flex of Clark's muscles under his fingertips for his trouble. "Clark."

"Yeah," Clark breathes, perhaps mistaking his urgency for some horribly staid sex talk. He sits up and tugs Bruce closer to him, lifting him with a hand under his back and sliding him over the sheets with ease. Bruce's body makes an executive decision, apparently taking being manhandled like he isn't two-thirty of hard-packed muscle as permission to immediately come, quickly and violently, over his stomach and chest and Clark.

Clark leans over him as he shudders and swears his way through it, and laughs into his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he hears himself say in Bruce Wayne's bland tones. "That's never happened to me before."

"This isn't what your reputation led me to expect." 

"I've been a little on edge."

"No kidding. I'll take it as a compliment." Clark pecks him on the cheek then sits back and inspects the scene of the crime, gathering some of Bruce's come with his fingers. He takes it to his mouth. It's apparently unobjectionable enough that he's happy to lick more off Bruce's skin with long drags of his tongue, up Bruce's abdomen and over his chest. He kisses Bruce's chin then his mouth, lets him taste himself.

"Clark Kent," Bruce says approvingly.

"Not so squeaky clean," Clark says.

*

It's hours until they have to check out. Bruce gets his fifteen minutes and more, then encourages Clark to sit astride his chest and slowly, slowly fuck his mouth, one hand braced above the bed and the other curled tight in his hair. When he's about to come, Clark's thighs tense under Bruce's hands, and like a compulsion, Bruce recalls how many pounds of force are necessary to crush a man's skull.

He rests his face against those thighs for long minutes after, heart pounding and sweat cooling on his skin as though he's the one who's spent. Clark strokes his hair with absolute gentleness.

While Clark showers, Bruce fetches the box from his suit jacket and tosses it to him when he re-emerges. Clark catches it one-handed, fumbling the towel at his waist, then looks at Bruce with a gratitude that verges on unbearable. 

Bruce says, "Don't open it unless you want to know what a hangover feels like."

**


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops--took me a little longer to finish than anticipated. This chapter (and also the entire fic, for that matter) ended up about TWICE AS LONG as expected, so... thank you for your patience and, uh, enjoy the rest of whatever this has been.
> 
> [the sound of distant frantic typing and muffled screams as I work on my Superbat Big Bang while keeping another half-dozen fic ideas at bay]

Clark gets a clearer picture of what Waller's containment protocols entail in the cab over to the airfield, when Bruce fills in Alfred and Diana with some of the specifics. He manages to deliver it all in a matter-of-fact tone and with only a slight grimace. Diana nods, apparently finding nothing strange in disciplining a goddess by stabbing at her disembodied heart. 

The conversation lulls as they go through security—as usual, Bruce objects to the body scan, and endures the pat down with an unfocused stare into the middle-distance. 

"Demons in a jar and a heart in a box," she says to him after, setting her hand luggage down and claiming on one of the executive lounge's plush seats. "It wasn't your night."

"It wasn't anybody's night," Bruce replies, short. 

Clark tracks his stroll across to the huge windows; he stops there, ostensibly to watch the aircraft take off and land. Everything about his body language says he's relaxed—the hands in his pockets, the slant of his shoulders, the casual smile to the lounge attendant—but Clark is half-expecting to be taken aside any minute and commandeered for a more expeditious trip back to Gotham. 

Alfred comes to stand by him, and Clark watches the artifice fragment as Bruce tightens like a vise.

"One percent chance might have been a conservative estimate," he says to Alfred, and Clark wonders if he's ever had a conversation in his life that didn't either begin or end in obfuscation, layered with double meaning, or wasn't just straight-up cryptic.

Alfred thins his lips. 

"You'll notice that I didn't jam it in him," Bruce says, almost defensively.

"Well done, sir," Alfred says. "I hope you're not expecting a gold star for your restraint."

Bruce glances at him, then over his shoulder at where Clark is sitting. Clark returns a shrewd look. It's obvious what they're talking about, even if the conversation is something well-worn enough to have developed its own shorthand. 

"I don't want the details, but I trust you've hashed things out," Alfred says.

"We have," Clark says. He gets on his feet and slips his hand inside his jacket as he approaches the two of them. He shows Alfred the box of kryptonite, then returns it to his pocket.

Alfred's response is unguarded surprise, quickly bundled away behind his usual unflappable demeanor, but the look he directs at Bruce holds an edge. "You are a man of extremes," he says to him. "And you'll be the death of me."

Bruce doesn't take the remark in the manner it's intended. Alfred pats his shoulder and then retires to Diana's company instead. 

Bruce lets out a long breath, his face fixed. "It wasn't anybody's night," he repeats.

"Definitely wasn't mine," Clark says. 

The morning was something else, he wants to say, but the way Bruce had felt in his hands—his blood pounding beneath his skin, the rasp of his breath, the meaning of it—that isn't something he can, or wants, to convey in an offhand comment. He feels an urge rise. He could be the one to take the initiative and rocket them back to Gotham. They could have the lakehouse to themselves for hours before it got dark. 

Bruce inclines his head towards him. He is still wound tight, his jaw set. The kryptonite feels heavy in Clark's pocket. The sooner they're back to the lakehouse, sooner Bruce will relax, because the closer he'll be to the cave and to more kryptonite he invariably has stashed there. His failsafe, his insurance, his peace of mind. 

There's a television dominating the wall behind them, muted and running a news channel; Clark watches the reflection of it in the window. There's been even less reported on the incident than Waller had predicted, not even a perfunctory mention on the ticker. 

"I trust Waller about as far as I can throw her," Bruce says. "When we're back, I need to dig out everything on this team of hers."

"Who all are you thinking is on it?"

Bruce looks at him. His forehead creases slightly, as though pained. "I don't know yet," he says, "Belle Reve is home to a lot of dangerous and unpleasant individuals. I know, because I put them there."

"They must have their limits, if Waller is comfortable using them."

"'Comfortable' is not a word I associate with Director Waller, Clark."

"Confident, then."

"Overly so, in my experience. I don't know how she's going to handle them, but I'm not going to sleep well until I can get eyes on her."

"If I can do anything—"

"No, I'll get—" Bruce pauses as their garbled boarding announcement comes over the PA system. He hefts his hand luggage. "I'll see about getting a contact in there. It'll take time and money, and I have more of one than the other."

"When we're back," Clark says, with full professionalism and not at all with a sly raise of his eyebrow, "I want to you to fill me in." 

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." There's a hint of a smile on Bruce's face, a reluctant amusement.

Clark grins, quietly pleased. He figures Bruce is going to blow cold on him at some point; his emotional mechanisms aren't as opaque to him as they were even a week ago, but it looks like they've yet to creak into motion. "If you put some of these guys away, then I know you have reams of data on them. Let me read your notes so I can be more prepared than I was last night."

Bruce hesitates. There's something he doesn't want to talk about. Or something in the files he doesn't want Clark to know. "It's not pretty," he says a moment later. "We're talking seasoned murderers here. For money, and just because they can. They're brutal, unflinching, sociopathic. At least one of them is a cannibal."

"He can bite me," Clark says. "I'm not that squeamish, Bruce."

There's a subtle change in Bruce's features; a tempering. He nods. "I'll pull the files," he says, as though it was his idea all along. "You need to know them inside out. No more screwups."

*

Bruce stalls things in the kitchen when Clark detours to fetch a bottle of water. He leans into the refrigerator and Bruce's hand comes to rest in the small of his back. It slides up his spine, to the nape of his neck. His heart is beating louder than is usual, and Clark's thumps in response, flushing him with anticipation. He turns and lets Bruce crowd him against the countertop.

"Is this a distraction?" Clark says as Bruce presses a kiss behind his ear, his stubble prickling against Clark's neck. 

"What makes you say that?" 

The fact that he seems inclined to screw against the cabinetry when there's work to be done, perhaps. Not that Clark is complaining—not when he lets himself focus on Bruce's scent, the mellow depth of his arousal, and it becomes evident that he's been turned on for some time. 

So, a distraction to be certain, but that's far from the entirety of it. Clark slides his arms around Bruce's waist and pulls him in tight. No escape. "Call it a hunch. There's something in the files I won't like?" 

"No," Bruce says. There's honesty in that bluntness, but he still shifts minutely, testing Clark's hold on him. "There's something in the files _I_ don't like."

"I see," Clark says.

"You don't, but you will." 

Clark opens his mouth to push further. Bruce catches his chin and kisses him emphatically.

"Can we," he says, taking the water bottle and setting it aside. "For now, take a moment."

"Well, since that's all you need," Clark says.

Bruce closes his eyes and exhales. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you."

"Nope," Clark says. There's no stopping his grin. 

The reality of Bruce losing his grip so suddenly and completely—and doing it for _Clark_ —it's not something he seems able set aside at the moment. It's a new facet among many, and Clark wants to hold it up to catch the light. Bruce ducks his head, which Clark takes for unlikely embarrassment until a moment later when he feels Bruce's hand wedge between them and slip the button of his fly. 

Clark relaxes his grip on Bruce's waist and leans back on the granite counter instead. "Here, really?" he says. 

Bruce just shrugs and tucks his hand into the front of Clark's slacks, the slow working of his fingers bringing a whole lot of pressure and friction to bear. Clark catches his breath when he presses in hard, and makes a conscious effort not to crack the countertop. He can feel every last thread in his cotton boxers, warp and weft dragging over his rapidly firming erection. 

A soft groan escapes him, and Bruce's pulse starts to race.

That warning beat. It gives Clark a moment of pause, even now.

"You know, I thought," he says, between the rise of his hips and the stroke of Bruce's fingers, "thought you were angry with me."

"When, last night?" Bruce slides a hand to the back of Clark's neck and encourages him to press his forehead to his shoulder. He smells of hotel soap. "I was." 

Clark shakes his head. "The whole time."

"I was," Bruce repeats. He works Clark's dick free from his underwear, and Clark experiences a brief rush of relief before Bruce leans his full weight on him, trapping it between them. Bruce's shirt buttons bite against the tender underside and his belt buckle is cold. He grunts politely and shifts, but Bruce is too busy stretching past him to care, grabbing for something on the counter. 

There's the sound of a bottle being uncapped, and the rich aroma of olive oil. Bruce's palm is slick and warm, and Clark makes no attempt to cover the sound he makes at the first luxurious glide of his fingers around him. He clutches at Bruce's shoulders and pushes smoothly into his fist.

"You bent my life out of shape," Bruce murmurs, "didn't even know you but I rebuilt in your honor. Left a space to remind myself—"

He turns his head and kisses Clark's ear, his grip tightening. Clark curls his own hand around Bruce's, fingers slotting between his knuckles. Part of him wants to slow things down—his thighs are already shaking; he'll have no room to poke fun after this—but he decides he'd rather rest his chin on Bruce's shoulder and fuck into his hand. 

"Then you came back. You came back from the goddamn dead and you found that space and fit into it perfectly. Damn right I was angry," Bruce says. His strokes turn short and brutal. "That's not what I left that space for. You weren't. Supposed to do that."

"That—" Clark says, as his heart cracks open and the first tremors of orgasm fight him for control. He'd never considered this dimension to his grief. "That's not fair. God—Bruce—"

He comes over his own hand with a gasp, over Bruce's and onto his shirt. His knees give up halfway through and he sinks to the floor. Bruce follows him down, kissing him, holding a fistful of his hair as he shakes through the last drawn-out spasms.

They sit there like that for a few seconds, Clark panting and a cabinet handle digging awkwardly into his shoulder, Bruce's hand wet against his stomach and the other tangled in his hair still.

Bruce kisses his mouth, and again. "I was dealing with it," he says. 

"Not very well," Clark says, catching his breath.

Bruce's jaw works. Clark can't identify the fleeting expressions on his face, but he can tell that Bruce doesn't want any of them there, and he wants Clark to see them even less. 

"Are you alright?" Clark asks him.

Bruce looks at him like he doesn't understand the question.

"You're not gonna have a breakdown, are you? Does Alfred need calling?" He pats at Bruce's pants, searching for his phone.

Bruce shakes his head and approximates a faint laugh. He catches Clark's hand and stills it. "Stop," he says. "No. I'm fine. It catches up with me sometimes, that's all. There's not much precedent for this kind of thing."

"Not much, but there are probably better ways to work through it."

"Any bright ideas?"

Clark pretends to give it serious thought. "You could try founding a religion," he suggests. 

Bruce's expression is sour.

"Kitchen floor it is."

It would only take him half a shake to get Bruce on his back and pull his clothes away, but Clark pushes him down slowly, his hands resting light on his biceps. Bruce's belt buckle jingles at it hits the tile, and his chest heaves as Clark runs his fingers down his shirt placket, sending its buttons skittering one by one. 

Clark kneels over him and reaches for his cock, but Bruce snags his wrist and guides him down—across his heavy thighs, and then between them. 

At his first touch, Bruce mutters wordlessly and cants his hips. Clark's fingers are slick with oil and come and Bruce arches into his tentative press, legs falling open as Clark works steadily deeper. The hand in Clark's hair slides the base of his skull and winds tight. Clark shivers, twists his fingers and Bruce tenses. "Right there," he breathes, tightening his grip. "Ah—right there, right there." 

Clark can see him shaking. It cascades over him and grows in magnitude as Clark keeps moving his fingers, until Bruce's throat works hard and he silently clenches around him. He pulls Clark up his body by his hair, the warm throb of his orgasm pressed between them.

He strokes Bruce's hair back, strokes his rough cheek, more straightforward affection to bolster the oblique comfort-seeking this sex so clearly is. Bruce sighs against his palm. "You're an existential nightmare, Clark," he says quietly. "The thought of you frightened me for a very long time."

That makes Clark think of the Enchantress and her demand for worship. Even if most of Clark's attention had been on trying to stop dissociating from his hijacked body, Bruce's response had been too visceral to miss. 

He asks the question anyway. "And are you still frightened?" 

Bruce curls upwards to sit. Clark can't read his expression. He's not sure that's any better than the parade of emotions he was struggling with earlier. 

There's a pause; Bruce wipes the side of his face with his wrist. "Why would I be," he says. Then he seems to notice the mess they've made of themselves, or his patience with it runs out, and he gets to his feet.

*

Bruce insists that Clark take the first shower. When it's his turn, he spends longer in the bathroom than Clark has heretofore known, and when he finally joins Clark in the cave he's scrubbed and shaved, thrown on soft black sweats and a careless smile, the actuality of him sanded off at the corners. 

It's as much armor as the suit would be.

Clark relinquishes his desk chair—which, despite looking like it was commandeered from the set of _Alien_ , is remarkably comfortable—and leans on the desk at his elbow, arms just touching.

"Take the other screen," Bruce says, and elbows Clark incidentally as moves the mouse to shift a folder onto one of the auxiliary displays. Clark takes the hint; he settles onto a decidedly less ergonomically-forgiving stool and clicks it open.

A familiar database expands to fill the screen. Mugshot on the left, personal details below that with flyouts of arrest records, an extensive, rigorous profile on the right, known associates below that. He glances over at Bruce. He has the skeleton of a similar file open, compiling an entry for June Moone. 

With some trepidation, Clark begins to read. 

They're a colorful bunch. Entertaining is probably not the right word. He definitely skims the reports on Waylon Jones through his fingers—he's not squeamish, but he has his limits. He's almost through all of them when he spots the landmine: six dispassionate words at the bottom of Harleen Quinzel's rapsheet. ACCOMPLICE TO THE MURDER OF ROBIN.

Bruce's profile is fixed into a frown as he types. His shoulders are stiff. Clark knows he is expected to say absolutely nothing.

So he says absolutely nothing.

"Append everything you remember from last night," Bruce says, without looking away from his monitor. Moone's record pops up onto Clark's screen. "I'm going out."

"Want some company?" Clark asks. He knows it's a stupid question before it's out of his mouth.

"No."

Bruce strips off his shirt and approaches the suit in its capsule. He pauses with his hand over the biometric lock. "You know where the coffee's kept," he says. He keeps talking as he suits up. "Help yourself to anything in the fridge. There's a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet but please don't touch anything else in there." He pulls the cowl into place. "I prefer the left-hand side of the bed."

*

In the end, Clark spends a few hours keeping Metropolis in order, and a few more in the weightlessness of the mesosphere. It's a different from flight, no gentle tug of gravity trying to pull him to earth. No sound in the vacuum unless he listens for it. 

The report intrudes on his thoughts at frequent intervals. Bruce had resuscitated Quinzel, even knowing she had a hand in the murder of his son. All it would have taken was a good man, doing nothing. Clark only hopes that Bruce considers it an act of compassion on his part, and not weakness. 

Could he do that a second time? It feels unkind, but it also feels necessary to wonder. If Waller's drafted Quinzel onto her team, then it's as much a power play as anything else. People like Waller don't make power plays unless they're likely to work. 

Bruce may have retired the brand, but it worries him.

This, too: where there's Harley Quinn, there's the Joker.

Everyone knows their history.

He shakes these thoughts loose and focuses on the world beneath him. There are, as there always will be, cries for help. He turns in frictionless space, locates the source of the distress and re-enters the atmosphere with a crack.

*

Later, Clark hovers by the bed. The foliage outside cuts its silhouettes into the meager light cast by the moon.

Bruce had lied. He sleeps diagonally.

He lifts his head from the pillow. "Are you just going to stand there all night?" His voice is rough and low. He pulls back the sheets, baring the contours of his chest and flank, the cusp of a bruised hipbone.

Clark bends one knee on the edge of the mattress. "I didn't want to wake you," he whispers. 

"I'd have to be asleep for that." Bruce stretches his arms above his head with the casualness of habit, elbows bent against the headboard. His wrists fall across one another, almost like an accident. 

Clark gathers them with one hand, tight over the narrow bone and sinew, thumb pressed against his pulse. It flutters like a caged bird.

"Good," Bruce whispers as Clark climbs across his thighs, as though Clark is the one pinned down and hungry. 

*

Later, under the silently rising sun, Bruce says, "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Clark says sleepily. Then, shaking himself into wakefulness, "within reason."

"When you were dead," Bruce says, and then hesitates. He lifts a hand then lets it fall back against his chest. "Was there—did you—"

He stumbles, tense against Clark's side. Clark trails a hand over his shoulder and lies it flat against his neck. He doesn't relax and Clark doesn't make him ask his question out loud.

Clark could lie through his teeth, but he's not sure Bruce would believe him even if he could say for certain that there was anything more than oblivion waiting. He'd only entertain it long enough to be pissed at the immense theological repercussions, over being railroaded into accepting Pascal's wager.

"I don't remember anything," he says softly, honestly. "I'm sorry."

Bruce nods, whatever suspicions he had confirmed, and rolls over to sleep.

*

It's a few weeks later that Clark descends into Gotham in the early hours and finds Detective Spencer slumped unconscious against a streetlamp, wrists zip-tied behind his back and a bruise developing on his jaw. The Bat looms over a second prone body nearby, retrieving an unmarked envelope from inside the man's coat. Clark takes a peek—as far as kickbacks go, it's not a substantial one. Spencer was easily bought, or maybe they had enough on him that he only needed a little sweetening. Or, maybe he got a pay cut once it was apparent the Bat was in play.

He imagines the same thoughts are occurring to the Bat, but then he raises his grapnel and ascends to the rooftop. Clark frowns. It seems unconscientious of him, that this would be the extent of his involvement here. 

The sky is turning ashy above Gotham's perpetual cloud banks, and the morning wind whips a chill through the air that even Clark can feel. The glare emanating from the man lurking in the shadow of the rooftop water tower, however, warms him to his bones. 

He's crouching on the edge of the building, surveying the scene below. "Go home," he says as Clark alights a safe distance behind him.

"Good morning to you, too."

"I don't know why you're here, but I hope it's not for small talk."

"Nothing of the sort," Clark says. He rests a foot on the roof's raised lip, and then his forearm on his knee, and looks down. "He has to go into protective custody."

Bruce grunts.

"Are you just going to leave him giftwrapped—"

" _Apprehended_." Bruce lowers his binoculars but keeps his eye on the street. "I'm aware that I'm doing the GCPD a favor when I tie up their loose ends, but try not to make it sound like I'm rewarding them."

"You can't just leave him down there for the rest of the night." 

Bruce shrugs and raises his binoculars again.

"Look. I know you don't want to turn him in to the people who looked the other way while he made a mockery of the system," Clark says carefully, "but you can't leave him there for any of Panessa's men to shank in passing, either."

"Stop interfering," Bruce says. "Isn't there a cat in a tree you can go save?"

"They climb down in their own time," Clark says primly. It's weak bait, and that's part of the insult, even if Bruce's ill temper seems wholly reflexive at this point. He looks down into the alleyway. Spencer is coming round; his systolic pressure increasing, his breath quick and sharp. Clark suspects he may be on the verge of a panic attack. "All I'm saying is, maybe—"

"I know what you're saying."

Clark sighs before he can help himself. He opens his body language, hands palm-up in appeal. "Why are you always trying to pick a fight?"

"I'm not. I'm just tired of your unsolicited advice." 

"I'm only trying to help."

"If I need your help, Kal-El," Bruce says evenly. "I'll ask for it."

"Well, if that ain't the biggest heap of bull I ever heard," Clark says, mild as milk.

Irritation rolls off Bruce in tangible waves. "Take your cornpone charm," he says, dispensing with the cool tones. He's unholstered his grapnel and stepped onto the concrete lip of the building. "And get the hell out of my city."

"Here we go." Clark folds his arms.

Bruce pauses, arm extended. He doesn't fire.

"Bruce," Clark says, calmly resisting the vertical deflection of his temper. "You've been trying to chase me off all week."

"So you were paying attention after all."

Clark has scrolled past enough clickbait to know that Bruce doesn't do dramatic break-ups. He does extended freeze-outs. Protracted indifference, until the person gets bored and/or gives up. Their arguments are mostly trivial and anything but cold. Clark isn't worried.

"Yeah. One last bit of unsolicited advice: if you're trying to cut someone loose, it'll stick better if you don't proceed to kiss them stupid and then blow them on the hood of the Batmobile."

Bruce looks at him, and then says in monotone disbelief, "You call it the Batmobile?"

"If you want some space, just say so. You don't have to raze everything and salt the earth."

"I don't want space. I want you to stop interfering with my work." Still terse, but he's lowered his grapnel. He might be thinking about that blowjob. Clark wouldn't blame him; it was fairly memorable. "I have my methods. I know you don't approve, but that doesn't mean they're wrong."

"Not all the time, I guess," Clark says. "You do get results."

Bruce pins Clark with a look that could chill magma.

"So," Clark says, and—okay, he should have asked this much earlier. Bruce is combative by nature, so it's easy to blame him for all of their arguments, but he can admit when his own self-righteous streak has a hand in things. "What's the plan, here?"

Bruce rolls his shoulders and takes a step back from the brink of the building. "It's twofold," he says. His tone has shifted into something more professional. "Part putting the fear into Spencer so that when GCPD invariably let him off the hook, he'll think twice about picking up where he left off. Part sting. I'm expecting more of Panessa's men to show. So. If you could stop your cape flapping like the most literal of red flags, I'd appreciate it." 

"Is this how you're managing Gotham's recidivism rate? Seems pretty high-effort," Clark says, but he gathers his cape up in one hand and drapes it over his arm.

"You get out what you put in," Bruce says.

"Interesting," Clark says. "And what do I need to put into—" 

Their commlinks ping to life. Bruce presses a finger to his ear, apparently relieved that Clark didn't get to finish that particular sentence.

"Alfred."

"Sir, there appears to be an incident unfolding in Midway City. Unless you have something more pressing on your hands—"

Bruce shoots Clark a concerned glance. He returns it without reservation.

"On my way. Prep the jet." He cuts off the line, and then sighs heavily. "Do me a favor and drop Spencer off with the GCPD. Meet me back at the Cave, stat."

"Sure," Clark says with a grin, stepping backward off the lip of the building, arms spread. "But you owe me one."

Bruce catches Clark's wrist before he has a chance to surge away. "I mean it. Don't go barging in before we know what the situation is." 

*

Clark gets back to the cave a full fifteen minutes before Bruce, so he gets the advantage of the news feed visuals along with Alfred's quickfire updates over the comms. The reports are garbled and contradictory. The only thing that's certain is that something huge is going down. Most of the footage trickling in is distorted or banded with interference, but it's all of one thing: unnatural phenomena in the sky over Midway City.

Clark hears the liquid whoosh of the airlock as it displaces the lakewater, and a minute later Bruce appears, hair mussed where he's grabbed the cowl off.

"Early reports suggested it was a terrorist incident, but that's looking like Director Waller's spin," Alfred says. "Good thing it got the city center evacuated early, since the majority of it now appears to be on fire." 

Bruce swears under his breath, leaning straight-armed against the desk and tabbing through the feeds. "This has to be the witch again. Goddamnit. Get Waller on the line, Alfred."

"Our ARGUS contact says she's _in_ Midway, so don't expect miracles. Routing to speakerphone." He taps a few keys; the melodic pip of a number being dialed echoes in the cave. It rings twice, then is terminated midway through the third.

Bruce rubs his eyebrow, his mouth set in a displeased grimace. "You're testing me, Waller," he mutters. "Okay, let's move."

"Diana is already en route by road," Alfred says. "The Batwing is fueled and standing by."

Clark takes exactly one step forward before Bruce's hand plants in the center of his chest.

"Not you," Bruce says. "You stay here."

Clark shakes his head. Bruce can't possibly think he could watch the havoc unfold over the evening news while the Bat wades into the thick of it with a flagrant disregard for his own mortality. Something occurs to him. "Diana will be just as dangerous if the Enchantress gets hooks into her. More so. She doesn't have a weakness to exploit. I don't see you benching her."

"Her magic cannot touch me," Diana says over the commlink. She seems amused, either at Clark's assessment of her power, or at the idea that Bruce could tell her what to do. "You know, I thought I would have to carry you both out of the museum while you daydreamed. One under each arm."

Fine. Clark takes a different tack. "You've seen what she can do," he says to Bruce. "This isn't street-level stuff."

"Yes, precisely the point," Bruce says slowly, as though he's explaining to an idiot. This is what Clark gets for impugning his abilities, he supposes. "That is why I can't risk you anywhere near her."

"I can't stand by and do nothing," Clark says. "If she gets me, you take me out as hard as you need to. I know you won't hesitate."

Bruce's hand slides from Clark's chest and comes to rest on his hip. It's a simple touch, and a calculatedly intimate one. "This is not up for debate, Clark," he says. "And we are absolutely not assuming that annihilation is an acceptable outcome. For anyone."

Clark sighs. He knows that neither one of them can make a choice here, because there's no alternative for either of them—they can't choose to do good any more than a stone can choose to fall to earth when dropped. Clark can't stay, and Bruce knows that. Bruce can't let him go, and Clark knows that, too.

But Clark believes the good they can do will always outweigh the risks that they take.

"It won't come to that," Clark says, "not if I can help it. Bruce, if I want to be involved, you can't stop me. Get used to it, because there's only so many times I can explain it to you nicely."

Bruce's back goes rigid and his hand drops from Clark's hip. He looks oddly wounded.

Clark inhales sharply as understanding shakes through him. 

"You can't stop me," he repeats.

He'd assumed the kryptonite was a token thing. That there was more. That Bruce hadn't handed him the only means he had of shutting him down.

"Do you have it?" Bruce asks curtly.

God. If he'd known. Clark feels his color come up. He'd remembered how cumbersome the spear was, and how situational the aerosolized stuff seemed to be. He had assumed Bruce had other remnants and had developed more practical weaponization. That's why he'd decided to tumble the damn rock, had it polished and set. It was going to be a joke—a ring, intended to evoke brass knuckles. 

He can't remember why that was supposed to be funny.

"I, um." Clark realizes there's not going to be a time when this will be any less mortifying. "Yeah, I have it."

He digs into his cape's pocket and gives the lead container to Bruce. It's the same one that contained the kryptonite when Bruce gave it to him in the first instance. It's never stopped looking any less like a ring box. Bruce takes it and cracks it open. Astonishment flashes across his face, in tandem with something Clark can't quite place. Horror, perhaps. 

All the tension in the cave collapses into a singularity of inescapable awkwardness. In the acrid green glow, Clark breaks a sweat. 

Alfred clears his throat.

Bruce snaps the box shut. He looks utterly perplexed. "I have some reservations about this," he says.

Clark covers his mouth and tries to hold back a desperate snort of laughter.

"Clark, this—this is remarkably tacky."

"Oh, thank god," Clark says. "I thought you were going to say 'Are you trying to make an honest man out of me?' and I was going to have to be pretty rude."

"I'm sure you'll find another occasion." Bruce slots the box into a belt pouch. He rakes back his hair with both hands, laces them at the back of his neck for a moment before pulling up the cowl.

"So," Clark says. He feels strangely buoyed. "There's your safety net. Now, are you going to let me help?"

"It's like you said." Bruce thumbs at the corner of his jaw, manipulating something in the cowl. His voice drops into a synthesized bass. "I can't stop you."

*

Bruce informs him that it will take forty-seven minutes for the Batwing to reach Midway. Clark can hear nothing from the city itself; there is a strange pressure in his ears when he stretches his senses in that direction. It's similar to the vacuum when he breaches the Earth's atmosphere, but with a synesthetically opalescent texture. 

It's immensely frightening. Moreso than if he could hear screaming.

Forty-seven minutes. Clark could be there several orders of magnitude faster, but Bruce has made his concerns clear. 

"So long as the Enchantress is involved, Clark, you're a liability," he says, reiterating as he vaults into the jet. He tucks his cape to one the side of the pilot's seat and straps himself in. "It's imperative that I'm there to override you, if you're compromised again." 

The sanitized phrasing doesn't escape Clark's notice. He taps his communicator into his ear as the jet's canopy swings shut with the hiss of hydraulics. "Don't spare me," he says.

Bruce says nothing, flipping at the switches on the flight controls. He grips the Batwing's thrust lever and the engine roars to life. 

*

Clark follows in the Batwing's slipstream. Alfred keeps a regular program of updates over the comms; Bruce only speaks to acknowledge or request further details, and once to ask Clark to fall back out of his peripheral vision.

"You're unreal," he says. He doesn't mean it as insult, nor compliment. Clark assumes Bruce finds him distracting.

Six miles out from Midway, the night gets blacker, the stars blotted out under a preternaturally dense cloud. Another mile closer, and they can see the swirling stormclouds funneling up from the city itself spark with lightning. It looks like a gargantuan tornado, except—

"Are those rocks?" Clark says.

"Appears to be the case," Bruce says. He sounds fairly indifferent to the fact. His repeated exposure to things that float but shouldn't has apparently left him unfazed. "Here's the plan. It's a simple plan. We avoid the witch completely. Locate her heart. It's probably not with Waller any more, considering this clusterf—" 

"—B," Clark cuts him off urgently. The air pressure has just changed drastically, making his eardrums crackle. "Can you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Bruce says. Clark watches him check the dashboard readouts. "Hm."

Above them, the clouds and rocks tighten, gathering into a orb, and then they unfurl all at once like a flower blooming, or a seed pod exploding. 

The sonic boom slams into Clark a second before the rocks do—he brings his arms up instinctively and they shatter around him, ricocheting away in fragments. He hears the dull crunch of one impacting the Batwing's canopy and shouts a warning before he realizes the comms have gone dead. 

The Batwing's engine stalls. The aircraft gracefully nosedives. 

In the cockpit, an alarm whoops insistently. Under that, he can hear Bruce gunning the thrust lever and flipping at the controls, an ignition sequence that he cycles through twice without success. His voice is level; urgent but not panicked. "Alfred. Manual controls are unresponsive. Unable to switch to drone mode. Override and restart engines." 

A low curse as he realizes the commlink is down. Only then does he calmly say, "Clark."

Clark flits beneath the Batwing. Its exterior is a sleek radar-absorbent material that is difficult to grip at the velocity it's traveling at; he has to crumple the bodywork to keep a firm hold. He looks forward to Bruce giving him a hard time about that. Clark will remind him what his alternatives were.

Midway's suburbs blur beneath them, and then they're coming up on the city-center skyscrapers. Clark locates a suitable rooftop just as a second shockwave hits. He is not prepared; it volleys him backward, the Batwing spinning out of his hands like a discus. One wing impacts the concrete lip of the building and the vehicle flips, skidding up against the roof access. 

Clark lands ass over teakettle on top of it a moment later.

Pebbles hail down around them, pattering onto the roof and onto the Batwing with an innocent metallic clinking. He hears, very distinctly, Bruce exhale through his nose.

"This is the second time in less than a year I've written this thing off," he says, voice flat and hollow in the jet's cockpit. "Do you know how much sweet-talking Alfred's going to take?"

Clark rights himself and the jet, and then peels up the shattered acrylic canopy. The Bat glowers up at him as he untangles himself from the harness.

"I did my best," Clark says. "Isn't your stuff shielded?"

"Of course," Bruce retorts. He sounds strained, like he's been punched in the lungs. "From EMPs. Not from whatever that was."

Clark offers a hand. Bruce ignores it and extricates himself from the ruined jet with catlike dignity. He does, however, lay a hand on Clark's shoulder as he glances up at the sky. There still aren't many stars in evidence.

"Looks like rain," Clark says. A streak of lightning dances through the striations of cloud and Clark's skin shudders—still some residual magic at play. The accompanying rumble of thunder resolves into the chop of helicopter blades. A Chinook flies overhead, traveling low, violently loud and echoing in the abandoned canyons of the city streets. 

"Looks like military." Bruce steps up to the edge of the building. "We're too visible up here. Move."

He drops feet-first into the abyss between buildings, the muted report of his line firing a moment later. Clark catches up with him in the shattered window frame of a third-story office floor. Leaves of smoldering paper lazily drift into the street below. 

There's a squad of soldiers moving in on foot, the burbling static of walkie-talkies. 

Clark's comm abruptly comes back online with a piercing blast of feedback. Bruce winces slightly and makes an aborted gesture toward his ear.

"Alfred," he says.

"Welcome back, sir. Preliminary reports suggest the 'terrorist incident' has been neutralized. You may find yourself surplus to requirements."

"Details?"

"None forthcoming, as yet. Master Wayne, about the Batwing. I'm getting some alarming status readings—"

"You're breaking up," Bruce says and closes his line.

Clark hears Alfred's disgusted sigh, and then he terminates the connection on his end.

"You're in so much shit," Clark says.

"Clark..."

"Oh, hey—you're literally grounded."

"Shut up, Clark," Bruce says, without rancor.

"I wonder how you're going to get home."

Bruce closes his eyes briefly and sighs. "Is there a dignified way to do this?"

Clark shrugs and offers him an apologetic smile, then gestures with upturned hands. Bruce steps close and lets him wrap an arm around his waist, though that seems to be the extent of his willingness to participate. 

"Hold tight," Clark says. He takes to the sky, and grins to himself when Bruce decides it's in his best interests to do just that.

*

He leaves Bruce at the cave and makes a trip back for the remains of the jet, leaving him alone with Alfred's high dudgeon. He returns through the airlock, settling the carcass down on its landing pad.

Ensconced in his nerve center, Bruce is taking a call.

"Go ahead and say it." Waller's voice, reverberating in the glass-and-concrete space.

"Told you so," Bruce says. He's leaning back in his chair, ankle resting on one knee. Body language to help him maintain the casualness he's forced into his voice. He is, as far as Clark can tell, several leagues beyond furious. "You made one hell of a goddamn mess, Amanda."

"I need your help," Waller says in so brazen a deflect that Clark can't help but be impressed. "I can deal with the damage to the city, the casualties, but not so much the attention. What I need is for you to run interference while I tidy up."

"Is that right," Bruce says.

"And since you have me over a barrel, I suppose you're going to leverage yourself a meeting."

"Have your people call mine about a rendezvous." Bruce leans forward. "You know what my price is."

There's a few seconds of pause. Bruce taps his fingers across the desk in brief staccato.

"I can't make any promises," Waller says. 

"Not good enough."

A long sigh. "Fine. I'll call in some chits. We can talk more in person." 

"Waller. One more thing."

"What is it, Mr. Wayne?"

"Your witch."

There's a tense pause. Bruce barely seems to breath, or even blink.

"The Enchantress and her brother are no longer viable assets," Waller reluctantly, almost regretfully, says.

Bruce sags for a moment and relief rolls off him like morning mist off the lake. "Dr. Moone?" he asks.

"Staff psychiatrists say she'll recover, with time and care."

"Jesus," Bruce sighs. Waller hangs up without so much as a farewell.

"Our man in ARGUS," Alfred begins.

"He stays."

**

Midnight, and the lakehouse is quiet. Clark sits barefoot at the kitchen bar, hand curled around a mug of cocoa and yesterday's crossword on the counter. Four across: not disturbed by strife or turmoil or war. Eight letters.

Bruce has been in a good mood, for a given value of good. He is a man who is held in shape by his stressors, but removing a few has helped him breathe a little easier. June Moone is freed from the Enchantress' grip, and Waller's shadow has retreated, for now. The kryptonite has returned to his vault. 

(They don't, haven't, won't talk about the ring.)

The Aston's headlights play over the lakehouse's polished surfaces as Bruce pulls up under the carport. Clark fills in three more clues before the engine stops idling and he hears the door open, and is halfway through a fourth when Bruce slides a dog-eared folder onto the counter next to his paper.

"Eleven down; favorable or desired outcome," Clark says. "Seven letters."

"Success." Bruce sheds his jacket and settles on the other side of the bar, inscrutable as he twists his collar pin free and loosens his tie. "Not the cryptic clues? You've suddenly plummeted in my estimation."

"Not like that's ever a precipitous drop," Clark says. "I was, but I thought I'd go easy on you. So, Waller ponied up."

Bruce taps the folder; a cufflink scratches against the granite counter and he slips them loose, placing them next to his pin. "Collection of documents found to be dodgy, i.e., dross."

"Dossier. Anagrams, really?" Clark flips the folder open and skims the first few pages of blacked-out profile sheets. "You're not convinced these are legit."

"Too much of it's been redacted to know. I need to do a little restoration work, then cross-reference it with my own intel before I make any further plans."

Clark lifts his mug of cocoa, watching Bruce over the rim as he takes a sip. "But you have been making plans."

He expects a hum of anticipation from him, drive and vision alchemized into purpose. Instead, Bruce grimaces.

"I need to. Waller—she's not going to shut her squad down just because I told her to. I suspect she's going to keep us busy." The grimace transitions into something more impenetrable. "And then there's Luthor."

"Luthor? You think he's orchestrating something from inside?"

Bruce shakes his head. "Not exactly. 'The bell has been rung.' That's what he said to me. He believed with absolute conviction that there was something coming. Enemies."

"He's not exactly compos mentis, Bruce," Clark says. "I don't know what he saw in that ship, but it broke his mind."

"He was already—" Bruce makes a slight gesture. Clark gets the picture. "He's no worse than he already was. Erratic, yes. Read too much Nietzsche, definitely. But he was scared, not crazy. We know there's technology in play that is not Kryptonian. Circumstances being what they are, I think we should be prepared for anything." 

"These past few weeks really did a number on your cynicism."

"I'm a changed man," Bruce says, his dry amusement resurfacing. He leafs through the folder. "The things these people are capable of—they're incredible. If I can find them and talk them around, we—"

Clark cuts in, raising a finger. "If I recall, your idea of talking—"

"Fine, okay," Bruce says, ceding Clark's point with a roll of his eyes that is heard rather than observed. He closes the folder over and rests his fingertips on it, taps. "You or Diana can talk Curry around. With this, hopefully we'll get some idea on how to find him without chumming the waters."

"You should definitely work those fish puns out of your system, either way," Clark says. "Or maybe that's the trick—stick your head into the ocean and insult his heritage." On an impulse, he tugs Bruce's tie free from his vest. He indulges a further impulse and begins to slowly twine it around his fist. 

An unassuming smile plays at the corner of Bruce's mouth as he's drawn closer. "I know what you're fishing for—" Clark groans at that, "—but I'm hitting the streets soon." It's not apology, nor is it invitation. 

"Not gussied up like that, I hope." Clark floats so that he can lean far enough to slip Bruce's vest buttons; his hip touches the counter, his only grounding other than the hand wrapped in the cool silk of Bruce's tie.

"The city doesn't sleep," Bruce says, as Clark twists, clearing the counter in an exaggeratedly slow arc and turns onto his feet in a lazy somersault, like an astronaut in micro-gravity. Bruce looks at him like he's the most incredible, ridiculous thing he's ever seen. Maybe he is. He touches Clark's cheek as though he is. "And Alfred still hasn't forgiven you for the olive oil on the tile." 

"Hasn't forgiven _me_?" Clark says, as Bruce noses in for a lingering kiss, distracting him while he untangles his tie. "Hmm. I suppose I should get back to Metropolis at some point, check my landlord hasn't re-let my apartment."

"Please do," Bruce says. "I'm already tired of your snoring."

Clark grins. "Seven across: forgiveness for a second-rate answer," he says, brushing Bruce's lower lip with his thumb. "Ten letters."

"Absolution," Bruce says.

*

The rain abates, and Bruce shakes out his umbrella one handed, juggling his cup of coffee in the other. Around him, the memorial is quiet—just the sound of traffic and the distant clatter of the monorail. The pavement underfoot is clean, chalk long faded, candlewax flaked off, the last wilted petals swept away months ago. No more tributes necessary.

He checks his watch. Still another ten minutes until he has to get to his three o'clock. He enjoys a deep breath of crisp spring air.

"I'm not sure they know what to do with it," says a warm voice. A figure in a blue hoodie steps into his periphery. "Feels kinda awkward."

"It's fine just as it is," Bruce says. "You shouldn't have to be dead to be appreciated."

Clark seems as aware of the irony as he is. Bruce glances at him in time to catch his pleased grin. The hoodie he's wearing is a bootleg, the Superman crest cracked and faded with wear. Bruce wrestles with both dismay and affection. 

"Happy birthday," Bruce says, not quite able to suppress his smile in the end.

"It's not—" Clark frowns. "Huh. Technically, that's three, now."

"I hope you're not anticipating that many gifts a year."

"Wouldn't want to strain your pocketbook. Besides, I don't think Hallmark has anything appropriate."

"To a dear friend," Bruce says. He checks his watch again, then brushes Clark's hand with his fingertips as he turns to leave. "Glad you're alive."

Clark snags his sleeve and holds him there a moment longer. "Me too," he says. "Here's to living."

***


End file.
